Why is it that some folks get the wrong impression about the center aisle of the church?
Is it perhaps because choirs sometimes process and recess, singing as they go up or down the aisle as the case may be? I have several wedding center aisle stories that are worth passing along for your amusement….
This goes back to First Presbyterian Church of South Bend and a wedding in which the bride asked her roommate to serve as her matron of honor. The bride was petite and the roommate was not. In fact she was more like Miss Texas, gone to seed. We will call her Trixie DeLite, because that is how she acted throughout the proceedings.
First, there was the processional. The maid of honor is the last save the bride down the aisle so she is the one all eyes are on with anticipation at that penultimate moment. Trixie did not fail the assembled through as far as entertainment value was concerned.
I have done over 200 weddings and I can tell you that absolutely no one does that step-and-pause, step-and-pause in wedding processions any longer. But Miss DeLite did.
Trixie was agile, to say the least. As Trixie took each step, she swung her hips, so dramatically, first to (oomph!) and then fro (oomph!), that I feared she would take out some unsuspecting wedding guest’s eye. She must have been pleased with the effect that her walk was having, even though I truly expected her to burst into that song from “Gypsy” that has the refrain: “With an oooh! And an oooh! And an oooh, oooh, oooh…!”
True confession time, I was glad that no one was looking at me because I was biting my tongue and trying to stop my shoulders from heaving up and down hysterically.
That should have been the end of the story. But it was not, because the bride had also asked Trixie to sing the wedding solo. I cannot recall what it was, but she delivered like Marlene Deitrich, belting out “See What the Boys in the Backroom Will Have.”
It was so dreadfully wrong that one could only watch it like a train wreck in slow motion.
The saddest part of all was that the bride’s father was the long time choir director of the church and had on his list of friends about three dozen people who could have sung appropriately and well.
But then again, I wouldn’t have Trixie’s story with which to DeLite you!
