15/11/2011

Confession: I Knew The Bride

Dear Father Simon and the co-confessees,

I wish to confess in the strongest possible terms to a sin of deceit
against my beloved wife, a sin made doubly worse that it occurred in the house of God, and at a time of great signficance for
both of us: our wedding.

I should add an extraneous fact: I am a writer of various sitcoms that
you may have seen televisually, and your verdict may influence whether I one day try to work this true tale into a sitcom plot if forgiven, or whether instead I cling to it guiltily, your non-forgiveness meaning it's more tragic than funny and best left well alone.

My story begins some years back when my wife and I (pause for applause,
oh no it's not a groom's speech) - then fiancee and I - were planning our wedding and we opted to learn our vows. It was her idea but with some experience of the stage I felt quite at home with it. Months before the big day, she'd memorised the lot. I of course had no need to learn them so early - I was confident I'd practically absorb the words off the page just by
looking at them the week before. My wife-to-be of course had other ideas, and a month before 'I do' she copied, pasted and emailed me the exact wording of the vows to encourage me to get memorising. I dutifully printed them out and took them with me wherever I went till each word was
committed to brain. Job done.

The evening before the wedding, vows in head, we met in the church with
our parents, best man and bridesmaid, and the vicar talked us through the service. "At this point," the priest said, "you will both give your vows, which I gather you've learned." The missus and I looked smug. He continued: "Then there are the readings, my sermon, Hymn 337 that you've chosen, and then the further vows."

"Further vows? What further vows?" I exclaimed to the priest, my
wife-to-maybe-be, and her and my nearest and dearest. Her face dropped. "You're joking?" she gasped. "Of course I am!" I continued with my best fake laugh. And all around gave a sigh of relief. Apart from my best man, who clocked me and shot me a look that seemed to say, "There is no way that you are joking." I later discovered that while my ever-efficient far-better half had
emailed me the vows, it had gone onto two pages, and with only one sheet left in the printer, I'd grabbed the one page assuming that was it. I'd carefully learnt the 'I groom take you bride' bit, but completely forgotten that we also had to learn the later bit about 'for better for worse, till death us do
part' etc, AND the giving of the rings, ie. "I give you this ring as a
sign of our marriage, with my body I honour you" and so on. 18 lines with 102 words that I had 16 hours to learn. All words genuinely felt by me, but not necessarily the exact ones that I could see tripping off my tongue with no prompting the following noon.

After the wedding rehearsal, the last-minute balloon-blowing at
reception, and lots of general slapping on the back from family members, as well as a few knowing looks from my best man, it was gone midnight before I finally sat down to try and learn these unexpected vows. I fell asleep that night holding the hastily printed second sheet of paper.

The wedding morning came and went with buttonholes, greetings cards
and ushers, and throughout I kept the new vows to hand with a sneaky revise every chance I could. As the service started, my beautiful bride appeared and all worry and thought of the impending memory test vanished, as my mind was filled only with joy at seeing her. When the worry did come back during the first hymn, I remember thinking, "It's ok, we're soulmates, she'll forgive me."

And so it came to the big moment : The vicar said 'Ok, say your vows now’. Well basically I messed up every line. Every single line. Apparently I came up with lines like 'with my ring I thee worship' ' to hold and cherish with death and parting' and the real clincher 'marriage is a really good thing isn't it'?
I've never got round to telling her that those fumbled words during the second part of the vows weren't, as I implied at the time, me "just getting a bit emotional"... but in fact the result of a paucity of printer paper several weeks earlier. For indeed, I did an ok job, I'd crammed on the day and got most of them right, but she and the vicar did have to help me a bit, and those tears in my eyes, yes, they were partly joy, partly sincere love, but partly also sincere panic at the fact that everyone I knew was now watching me go as blank as sheet of new A4 paper, that I wish I'd had handy a month previous. I did finish my vows, I am legally married, so I seek forgiveness from my wife. I love her, and I give her this confession as a sign of our marriage, with my body I honour her, all that I am I give to her, all that I have I share with her - apart from this guilt - within the love of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. See, I can do it now!

Yours, or more correctly, hers,

Dennis