Wedding Day Scenes – The Unexpected Ones

From wedding pictures, we expect to see seemingly flawless scenes, airbrushed faces, and fairytale-like moments adorned with ‘unearthly’ flowers all over places. They are simply directed in front of cameras. If I were to choose, I would prefer to have everything spontaneous. But of course my soon-to-be wife wouldn’t agree to that.

Behind those ‘for-camera-only’ wedding scenes are real and very ‘humanly’ perfect memoirs. Humans are not perfect but those imperfections are perfect qualities of a real life. They are for a purpose. For me, they are worth paying attention to and are perfect materials for my wandering mind and fingertips as well.

At the church, I was seated somewhere near the last row. There were only a few people attending the wedding so every detail of the church was so vivid. On my right, there was a woman perhaps in her twenty’s wearing a green dress that seemed to dance with the air from the fan. Beside her, there was an old woman. She must be her mother. Every time the priest called to let us stand, she would always check the dress at the back of her daughter. Then she would stretch the clothing to cover the exposed skin on her back. And she kept on doing that until the priest declared conclusion of the ceremony. I noticed later after the mass, her daughter’s bra showed off from the side opening of her dress. The dear mother didn’t know about it. In my mind, I smiled and said “what a mess despite a mother’s care!”

A few chairs away in front of my seat, the three cute flower girls were having their own kind of fun. They were horse-playing while the priest was doing his sermon. Then they spread the Santan flower petals on the chairs and on the floor. When each of their baskets was empty, they had it used like an all-in-one prop. One of them used it like she’s tickling a guitar. The two girls followed her. Then another girl made a gesture as if she was playing a tennis racquet. The rest of the girls mimicked her as well. When a friend bringing a DSLR camera came, all three of them struck poses with the baskets on their heads. What a beautifully innocent ‘creatures’!

In my wandering, a small hissing sound called my attention. It was from the little girl in front of me. I bet her mother, who was with her, put a color on her lips. They were very shiny and in full red color. I remember my 2 sisters when we were young. Like the little girl in front of me, they wouldn’t also close their mouths because it felt slimy according to them. The girl would occasionally smile at me showing off all her little teeth and after that she would pull her mother’s dress. At first, I just ignored her. Later, I just decided to smile back at her to get into her play. Then she pointed at me and said loudly to her mother “Ma, gwapo oh (handsome)…” Maybe it was something else but it was the word “handsome” that registered in my mind. At that, her mother turned to me and also gave her ‘motherly’ smile.

At the reception area, when I was standing behind the podium, I felt something hit my behind. I turned around. When I saw it was the same girl who kept on smiling at me inside the church, I said ‘Hi’. Then she giggled and ran away. When I was talking on the microphone, she came back and hit me again. A camera-woman saw that. I just hope she documented such funny encounter with the little kid.

The whole wedding celebration wasn’t flawlessly perfect but everything was humanly perfect! Being a fan of spontaneity, everything was amazingly perfect and perfectly amazing!