W e dd i ng s G u i de f o r 2 0 0 5
right next to the car on a back country road,
and the skies opened up. “It poured the day
of the wedding — it was awful,” she said.
“We had rented a tent and crammed every-
body underneath it.”
Instead of standing near the picturesque
gazebo and waterfall as planned, 115 guests
huddled in the shelter of the single tent. The
pastor stood up front with the couple, rain
streaming down his back throughout the cer-
emony. “If rain on your wedding day means
good luck, then that day I got a whole lot of
really good luck,” she said. “Everything that
could go wrong, did go wrong.”
He’d Rather Be Fishing
Weddings and Chaos Theory
Tales from the people who know
I
f the devil is in the details, when it comes
to the “big day,” Satan must be living
large. Details have never been so important
nor so personal as on your wedding day. The
music is carefully cued, the colors coordinat-
ed. Everything from the type of flowers to
the placement of the napkins is planned.
Everything is in its place.
Enter the wedding chaos theory. With
infinite possibilities of what could go awry,
dealing with the unplanned and out of con-
trol is as much a part of weddings as all the
forethought and planning. From ring bearers
to toasts, from cakes to pictures, a wedding
becomes unpredictable once set into motion.
The keys to survival are flexibility and
humor.
“I’ve been to a lot of weddings and I
always call it the wedding gremlin,” said
Dennis Overlandmiller of Creative
Endeavors Photography.
Rowdy Ring Bearers
At one wedding, the wedding gremlin
took the form of the 2-year-old selected as
the ring bearer. While walking down the
aisle, the toddler began swinging the pillow
www.eugeneweekly.com
BY ALEXANDRA ARCH
around and the wedding bands flew into the
air, falling among the seated guests. But the
show must go on, so the bride and groom
faked the ring exchange while they said their
vows. After the ceremony the guests
searched on their hands and knees for the
bands. The prize for the person or persons
who found them: first in the buffet line. It
was a scramble.
his tuxedo right before walking down the
aisle. As the pictures reflect, he wore his
underwear to deliver the rings to the bride
and groom.
Neither Rain, Nor Snow, Nor …
On rare 100-degree days, Overlandmiller
has seen both cakes and brides melt in the
heat. The women wore heavy, multi-layered
A bolt of lightning struck right next to the car on
a back country road, and the skies opened up.
At another wedding, Overlandmiller was
shooting pictures of a couple who married
beneath a large oak tree at Wayne Morse
Ranch. Their Labrador retriever had per-
formed wonderfully at rehearsals the day
before as the ring bearer, dutifully trotting
down the aisle. But on the wedding day, the
canine spotted a squirrel at the base of the tree
and went after it. Fifteen minutes later, the
dog was caught and the ceremony continued.
Marlene Hockema, an event coordinator
for Weddings Extraordinaire, watched as
another young ring bearer decided to strip off
dresses at a renaissance-themed wedding and
the men clanked around in chain mail
re-enacting sword fights. Wearing a heavy
gown, the bride parked herself under the
shade of an umbrella and put on a brave and
sweaty (oops, glowing) face.
Kelly Passmore knows all about more
serious wedding disasters. Flash floods and a
tornado ripped through the area the day
before her wedding in May 2004 in Spokane,
Wash. On the big day, Passmore’s ride to the
country wedding site picked her up two
hours late. Then a bolt of lightning struck
“Every wedding has something,”
Hockema said. “Some are more severe than
others. Some you can cover up and laugh,
and some turn the tide of the day.” Minor
things, such as a DJ who showed up to a
reception down by a river without extension
cords, have taught her to carry extras. At
another riverside wedding, the groom was
missing when the time came to take pictures.
Hockema and others found him standing in
the middle of the river — fishing.
It wasn’t funny at the time, but now
Michelle Urso laughs about her wedding
chaos. The UO journalism graduate student
was married June 2004 in the coastal town of
Yachats. The ceremony ran smoothly, but a
dog bit Urso’s ex-boyfriend (hmmm), and the
food was two hours late. Someone forgot the
sunscreen and the groom was so sunburned,
he was an alarming shade of purple from his
nose up. Try to fix that one in PhotoShop.
But the highlight (or should that be low
point?) of her wedding was unknowingly
doing a striptease for her prim and proper
mother-in-law. The bustier she wore was
uncomfortably tight. Thinking she was alone
in a hallway outside of the reception, Urso
flung her dress over her shoulders and undid
the pins one by one, tossing the bustier onto a
table. Turning around, she realized her moth-
er-in-law was standing behind her, frowning
in disapproval. She flashed the dear lady a
grin, spun around and rejoined the festivities.
One More Crisis Narrowly Averted
Let’s not forget the unsung heroes who
save the day. Most caterers have countless
stories of wedding mishaps. But we rarely
hear about their wedding triumphs. For
example, a server at one local catering com-
pany dove like a baseball player sliding into
home to save the cake as the table collapsed.
Another caterer opened the cake box to put
on the final touches only to discover a melt-
ed pile of icing. The baker, trying to save
time, transported the cake before it had
cooled and the entire structure had collapsed.
The caterer called the baker and had another
cake delivered immediately. It arrived in
time, and as she was putting the final touch-
es on the new one, the bridal party walked in.
The bride never even knew.
So brides and grooms, caterers, planners
and photographers alike, whether you were
spared the knowledge or experienced it first
hand, wedding disasters occur in all shapes
and sizes. But it’s surviving them that mat-
ters. Maintaining a sense of humor helps. A
selective memory, too. After all, what’s the
first day of a couple’s life together without a
few bumps in the road?
❤
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