MAYDAY IN JUNE - humorous/light feature
LOOK Magazine MAYDAY IN JUNE
By Bobby Caingles
Ahhhh. . . . June—summer’s sweet parting. . . cool, starry nights. . . romance’s choicest
spell—when True, Bold Love makes its pledge. Perfect season for a perfect wedding. Or
so they said.
As a veteran of life’s unprintable moments, let me immediately assure the glossy-eyed
couples out there that Murphy’s Law is alive and well even on those lovely wedding
nights. Just when you need everything to go right, everything seems to go wrong.
My fiance and I had been sleeping less and less those last few days of May—she,
creating those meticulous expensive little things (I think you call them ‘giveaways’) and
I, finalizing the invitations and other physical arrangements. She was a designer for one
of the top fashion boutiques in the country and I was working with the Public Affairs
Group of one of the leading banks.
So you could imagine how it was. She wanted it (our wedding) to be a work of art—she
designed her entire entourage’s attire herself, we scoured the streets of Intramuros for the
perfect venue, we turned Divisoria inside-out in search of all those tiny little details that
she couldn’t do without—and wanted the choreography to be as flawless as in one of her
fashion shows.
I, on my part, just wanted to make it the biggest media event since the Araneta-Marcos
wedding, this side of Marikina (I got a reporter from BusinessWorld to be my Best Man
to help things along).
We managed to get ourselves booked into one of those dreamlike places—very “Old
Manila”—with a spacious and very romantic garden. And very expensive (I still have
nightmares). The wedding itself was to be held in the center of the garden while
reception was to be at another section of the garden.
Wedding day. Finally.
Where was my bride? The invitation said three o’clock. She wasn’t even back in her
room at the hotel yet. And it’s three o’clock! Oh, gee! Oh, gosh! She finally arrived at
3:30 from the salon and, after doing a couple of takes for the video, was finally on her
way.
Was the pastor there? I was getting paranoid. The poor pastor was coming all the way
from the boondocks and had to borrow a car to get to our wedding. He was there.
The guests, by this time, had all lost their smiles. Mrs. Ruth Guingona (wife of Executive
Secretary Guingona) was an exception and was just so concerned about us—she was
beginning to wonder whether the wedding was going to push through at all.
To the tune of Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, however, the garden was suddenly
hushed in silence as the bridal procession flowed in. And all the anxiety, all the sweat
and all the waiting proved to be worth it as I saw my beautiful bride walk in.
The ceremony was proceeding decently, or so it seemed. Unbeknownst to us, however,
in the lull after the procession, our ring bearer took time off to chase our bible bearer
across the garden—and one of our wedding rights slid off one of those pillows you never
get to sleep on.
As one tends to do in those open-air affairs, one looks at the sky. And one suddenly
noticed that the clouds were moving faster, the wind blowing harder, and the next thing
we knew—everybody was rushing for cover from a very serious ‘bridal shower.’
It was a good thing that we arranged for contingencies with our very efficient hosts. Still,
it took some time to move the entire ceremony indoors. So it was inside the restaurant
where the rest of the program unfolded. As my bride and I presented our parents’
plaques of thanksgiving and appreciation, we had no idea of the panic that my wife’s
Maid of Honor was experiencing at that time when she saw that there was only one ring
with our ring bearer. A search party of two was quickly organized. They rushed back to
the garden—thank God the rain had stopped by that time—and ‘spread out’ on that wide
expanse of green Bermuda grass to search for the missing ring.
When we came to the part where we were to exchange rings, I calmly took one ring from
my Best Man while Cecille took the other from her Maid of Honor. We had no idea what
that big smile on her face meant.
As far as I can remember, nothing else went wrong in the course of the reception. . . .
Oh, except for one viand which turned out to be spoiled and could not be served.
Otherwise, everything was—well—let’s just say ‘beyond our expectations.’ Or, to put it
another way—what else could go wrong?
As we retired to the Philippine Plaza where we were to spend our honeymoon night, we
determined to forget the boo-boos of the day and enjoy each other on THIS NIGHT. I
experienced a kind of resurgence in my spirit as I anticipated things to come. It was then
that my wife revealed how she had bled early in the day and was on the first day of her
period.
Folks, this actually happened. . . . I’m not kidding you. Well, we look at it now and we
see how God has blessed this marriage, giving it a staying power beyond our own, and
say—who’s to complain about a screwed-up wedding? It also helps to hear true
confessions about other screwed-up weddings.
Well, I guess the moral of the story is—you can prepare your best for a wedding, and it
all splats back on your face. But when you get beyond this, you begin to realize—hey,
it’s just a wedding! And when you really get to mature, you realize that what you really
should have been preparing for was THE MARRIAGE, not the wedding.
Did I tell you about how we lost our honeymoon tickets to Boracay? But then that’s
another story.