Nuptials Are Piece of Cake--If Not Wedded to Perfection

C an there possibly be an occasion crammed with more potential for ringing success or hideous catastrophe than a wedding? We’ve seen ‘em all: some nuptials that came off as smoothly as a Noel Coward play, others that nearly ended in divorce before the cake was cut. We look back on a few of our more memorable encounters with the real Newlywed Game.

HE: I’ll feel better if I start on an optimistic note. Best wedding ever, no question, bar none, case closed, was the one my college pal Sean Grady and his intended, Sheila, staged at this big stone pseudo-Gothic Catholic church in Hollywood. Sean was this huge guy with a big red lumberjack beard who turned down a football scholarship to Notre Dame to study singing at USC. It seemed like he invited every terrific musician he ever knew to perform at their high nuptial Mass. It lasted almost all afternoon, but it was like a Puccini opera. And everything worked seamlessly.

The only thing that could have topped it was the reception. Both families were Irish. The band played jigs, the guests danced themselves silly, Bushmill’s declared a stock split.

Why did it work? It was that rarest of occasions: an extravaganza with a complete lack of pomposity. Tasteful, moving, fervent, loving and, eventually, loud and rowdy. Perfect.

SHE: When my daughter was married a year ago, she went for the classic church wedding--bridesmaids sweeping down the aisle followed by her on the arm of her proud father. The choir trilled; the altar was set with a blaze of white blooms.

Everything was perfect. Almost. The programs--those wonderful little missives that list the names of the bridesmaids, the groomsmen, the songs to be sung, were missing. How could this be, the wedding coordinator wondered? She’d put them in the church vestibule about an hour before the wedding began, to ensure they would be there for arriving guests.

Turned out her timeliness was the rub: before Christa and Kevin’s wedding, there had been a funeral in the church for a Vietnamese man. In an effort to help straighten up, one of the deceased’s relatives took them. They ended up in Vietnam! The best laid plans . . .

HE: The flip side of the Grady nuptials was a wedding several years ago at which I was hired to sing. It was K mart all the way. The bride wore a gaudy monstrosity that made her look as if she’d just been fished out of a vat of whipped cream, and it was topped off by one of those Scarlett O’Hara picture hats that was so large that it drooped over the side of her head like it had earflaps. There were a couple of hundred ill-tempered bridesmaids, all dressed in god-awful magenta taffeta and hats identical to the bride’s, and the groom was in powder-blue tail coat and pants and white patent leather shoes.

Both families, and especially the happy couple, appeared to detest each other, and I was forced to sing three gooey Carpenters songs. When the time came to kiss the bride, the groom turned to the audience with this amazingly lecherous leer, said “I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” bent the poor girl double and planted a big, sloppy one.

He paid me with a personal check. It bounced.

SHE: I once interviewed wedding coordinator Susan Nunn of Yorba Linda about the challenges of her job. She said that one of the trickiest things to handle was the de-booby trapping of a couple’s wedding-night chamber. (Often, couples spend their first night in the hotel where their reception is staged.) Seems she’s seen everything from marital beds sprinkled with cornflakes and pizza slices to missing bathing suit tops and buttonless clothing.

One of her greatest coordinating challenges happened at the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach. Just before a wedding, the hotel fire alarm went off. Announcements came over the loudspeaker for hotel guests to evacuate. Using her walkie-talkie, Nunn told her assistants to get the bride into the hotel garden so she wouldn’t panic. The wedding guests were able to remain seated, and the bride didn’t hear a thing. But , she found out all about it when she watched her wedding video.

HE: Hows about we perform a little public service: a few pithy thoughts on things that make for ghastly weddings and how to keep from doing them. My “don’t” list includes stupid and outlandish clothes (period costumes, weird colors and cuts), drippy, saccharine do-it-yourself vows, frighteningly pious ceremonies, dopey locations (back-yard weddings while the next-door neighbors are playing lawn darts) and overly predictable music (how many times can you listen to “The Wedding Song?”). “Do’s”: dove gray morning coats and striped ascots, short ceremonies (unless it’s you, Sean) and the implicit possibility of an unexpected and bizarre spectacle (big swimming pools adjacent to the reception are perfect for this).

SHE: The most important don’t: Don’t starve yourself to death to get into your wedding gear. There’s a trend afoot for brides and grooms to be as skinny as the dolls atop their wedding cakes. Young women and men are fasting and fainting dead-away at their nuptials. Stay away from liquid diets. Exercise instead.

Do plan everything down to the last detail, especially the reception proceedings. I’ve been to too many weddings where the guests were left to starve because the newlyweds were in front of the church posing for pictures. Have food ready for guests.

Another do, for brides: Do know that you are the star, not your gown. Too many gowns and veils overwhelm their wearers. There’s nothing more lovely on a bride than a simple gown with a hint of sparkle. So often you see a girl dripping in pearls or sequins from the top of her head to the tip of her toes. Enough already.

Here’s a question for you, Pat: If or when you get married, you bachelor you, what will you wear and where, ideally, would your nuptials occur?

HE: A morning coat, in church. And I want my friend Msgr. John Sammon to officiate in an Elvis suit.

SHE: And leave your bride crying in the chapel?