oooh, oooh, I used to be a wedding musician and did I SEE some shit, friends. gather round https://twitter.com/KatecBowler/status/1389639398900178944

okay, so I started playing at weddings when I was in 7th grade and I was too young to actually get a lot of the innuendo, but my earliest mortified wedding memory was of a sister giving a toast to the bride and reassuring the groom about her sister's prowess in bed

this is not from one of my gigs, but back in the day I had a conservative evangelical friend and he asked me to come with him as a +1 to a friend's wedding, as a friend

I agreed

the ceremony was a little odd, but I was used to odd at that point

I should add that my extremely conservative evangelical friend had warned me that this friend was "very conservative"

so I was kind of curious as to what HE considered "conservative"

so at the reception, people started clinking their silverware against their glasses and finally the bride and groom stood up and the bride said, "I've been waiting so long to do this" and they kissed

I turned to my friend and said, "She means kiss him AS A MARRIED WOMAN, right?"

my friend shook his head and was like, "I told you they were conservative, no kissing, no anything until they're married"

so anyway, he gets up from the table and goes somewhere just as the bride and groom do the table tour

so, I guess, they didn't know we were just there as friends, because after completing the pleasantries, as they were moving on to the next table, the groom leans in and whispers to me, "he's a great guy--don't let him get away!"

I smiled brightly at him and said, "Don't worry, I won't. I have compromising photographs!"

He gave me a baffled look and a blank smile and moved on.

And that, dear readers, was when I realized he was so sheltered that he didn't even know what that meant.

Can you fucking IMAGINE what their wedding night must have been like?

Then there was the wedding with two large, erm, temperamental families, in which there were two estranged camps on the bride's side and the uncle who brought

AN ACTUAL SHOTGUN

to the reception to "keep the peace"

he didn't use it, fortunately, but he brandished it a lot

Then there was the groom with the father and mother who were still very Into Each Other

and look, that's great when there's still heat in a marriage after a quarter of a century+

unfortunately, they both made toasts

and their toasts were both basically "look how much sex we're still having; hope your marriage is as sexy as ours"

like good for you but ffs it's not YOUR wedding, stop making it about you

then there was the one where for some reason that is UNFATHOMABLE to me, the bride had the groom's ex, with whom he was still friends, as a bridesmaid

and she spent the entire evening telling everyone who would listen how she was happy for him but he was going to be miserable

then there was the one with a divorced bride with two toddler-age-ish kids (I dunno, I suck at figuring out child ages), one of whom DID NOT LIKE the groom at all, and that kid was the ringbearer

so, he toddles down the aisle with the rings on a cushion and gets up to the whatever the raised area with the altar is called, and the groom reaches down to take the ring and the kid bites him

just latches on like a bull mastiff

and the guy is trying to play it off as cute and playful but the kid is just staring him dead in the eye and bearing down with all the force he can summon

and the groom's eyes are starting to water and the bride has this fixed smile while she tries to talk her child into not biting off his soon-to-be-stepdad's finger

and eventually the other kid who's like a year older or something saves the day by tickling his brother

honestly, respect, my little dude

then there was the one where the bride and groom were from different types of Lutheranism? and the priest said something in the vows that the bride had an issue with and the three of them got in an argument while we all sat there, frozen

like wtf read before you sign, lady

this one was after I'd stopped gigging, but attended another super-conservative Christian wedding as a friend's +1 and they were, um, clearly anti-gay because the wedding ceremony was all marriage BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN is the foundation of society AHEM

and the bride-and-groom dance was set to "Stay With Me"

and I could not stop giggling despite my friend's attempts to shush me and finally I just left because I couldn't stop

(bride caught groom in the bathroom shtupping the guy who'd been his best man a few months later)

like I loved finding that out because at the time I thought wow all of these people seem unaware that the featured song at this here ceremony about straight people pledging fidelity is actually a song by a (person who at the time identified as a) gay man about a one-night stand

but this was even better because while the bride apparently didn't know, it seems like maybe it was a CODED MESSAGE FROM THE GROOM TO HIS BEST MAN o.0

I mean, I have plenty of drunk people making fools of themselves stories but I feel like those are sort of cliche at this point