Wedding Catastrophes

When I was younger, I made a small business out of playing at weddings. Usually playing cello. I played a few with my sisters. Them playing piano while I played cello. Then, later on, eventually starting playing at weddings with a band. Again, I was on cello, and they were on guitar and piano, and occasionally percussion of some sort.

Mixed in there a played a few solo weddings or weddings with complete strangers, but I learned a lot about weddings. At some point, I would like to make a series about all of the things I have learned about weddings after being a part of so many.

People who play at weddings or do stuff with weddings all the time would probably laugh at how small a number this is, but I have likely been a part of or gone to about 75 weddings. I have seen all manner of characters in my time playing these weddings.

You have the bridezillas, you have the momzillas, you have the wedding coordinators who don’t know anything, you have the groomsman who forgets to show up until 5 minutes before the wedding. On top of these, you also have the weather, the directions to the place, the sounds system setup, etc. All of these things make weddings one of the harder events to coordinate. For many, at least before COVID, it was likely the biggest event that they would ever plan.

Not only that, but it was the most important event they would ever plan.

I could probably make a ten-point blog post of the many wedding catastrophes I have seen, not the least of which being an entire wedding cake toppling over or the weather holding off until right when the bride started walking down the aisle when the rain started to pour down.

As a musician, you learn to roll with the punches. You find that no one pays attention to you too much and because of this, they don’t give much instruction in the way of when to play and when to not. You often have to pry the information out of a wedding coordinator who thinks you’re the last one to worry about.

Today, I had the pleasure of playing another wedding. It was one of the oddest ways I ever got an opportunity as I was certainly not looking to play cello for a wedding, put it was plopped into my lap, and I didn’t want to say no.

This wedding I was rolling with the punches already as the day came around as the bride (the one who initially texted me) was very chill about everything. She didn’t even have a choice for song for me to play when she walked down the aisle, she just said for me to play.

I got to the venue and went up to the small chapel where they were to get married, and the chapel is an open wall concept, so wind passes freely through it. As I setup my chair and music stand, I quickly realized that the music stand was going to be an issue. Normally the pages are tough to get to stay with wind (which I had taken safety measures on), but in this case, the entire stand was trying to blow over it was so windy.

I decided that I would improvise without the sheet music, and I wasn’t too concerned, I would be fine. I had done it 30 times before.

About 5-10 minutes before I was supposed to start playing, I got out of my spot I had just been practicing in and went to put something in my cello case. As I did, I heard a thud. I immediately knew what happened. I set my cello on its side, and the wind came and blew it over. My initial reaction was not to overreact. I thought it would likely be fine besides a little extra tuning that would need to be done before playing again…but as I picked the cello up, I realized there was something hanging off of it. Originally I thought it was maybe just some of my bow hair, but as I looked closer I saw it…the entire A string on my cello had snapped in half and there was no way to fix it and certainly nothing in the next 5 minutes.

The mother of the bride came up to me to ask if everything was okay, as she had seen the whole thing. I assured her that it would all be fine and I would just use the strings that I did have to play…but inwardly, I had no clue what I was going to do. I didn’t know how I’d be able to play the songs I was planning to with the bottom three strings. However, I looked to God and said, “God, I don’t know how this is going to work, but I know you can work it out, please guide me in what to do.”

And through that prayer, I was able to play for the next 10-15 minutes without an A string and, and play a made-up song for the bride’s entrance.

Wedding catastrophes are more prevalent than you’d ever think, so, hire a good coordinator, or someone you trust to do the things you can’t worry about as you get closer to the big day!