Balderdash

The Moon In June

The month of June is the most popular when getting married. In case you’re wondering how this came to be, the ancient Greeks and Romans believed that fertility was at its highest during the full moon, clearly visible in summer. The Roman goddess of marriage, Juno, was venerated in June. Newlyweds were supposed to be bestowed with prosperity and happiness from her. The Romans, always the most practical, also chose June because the bride would most likely conceive and have her baby by the following spring. Then she would be quite recovered and fit enough to help with the harvest during autumn. Romantic, don’t you think?
The other even more odious reason was that Lent was over for Christians and warmer weather had appeared. Most people then took their annual bath in May, so naturally they would not smell as offensive as during the latter part of the year!
Gosh, imagine not bathing on your wedding day? Certainly a very inviting prospect to the newly wedded couple! In recent times though it’s just that the weather is so much nicer, and one could have outdoor wedding themes. Also, during the summer there is a much wider range of flowers to choose from at a cheaper price. This is an ancient rhyme which was sometimes applied when choosing the day of the wedding.
“Marry on Monday for health,
Tuesday for wealth,
Wednesday is the best day of all,
Thursday is for crosses,
Friday is for losses,
And Saturday brings no luck at all.”
However much you plan out a wedding, sometimes things go wrong. At a family wedding, the bride’s side was doing the flowers at the reception venue, but the bridegroom’s mum had told his sister from overseas to decorate the place, unknown to us. So our floral masterpieces were being carefully placed around and suddenly the sister would march in, grab a fistful of flowers from our beautifully finished arrangements and stalk off without a word! Finally, one of the ladies said, “Excuse me! Could you kindly ask before swiping our flowers?” Loads of tension! Then the bride had included a sister who was suddenly arriving for the wedding as a last minute addition to the retinue, and forgotten to inform the florist! Luckily, he is one of the most unflappable people I know, and he calmly went behind the scenes and re-emerged in about 10 minutes with a perfect bouquet.
I had the task of picking up the 3-tiered cake and taking it to the venue of the reception at another wedding. When I arrived at the agreed time, the cake wasn’t ready. Again, this lady was cool as a cucumber. She asked me to sit down for a minute, (it was much longer) whilst she finished the cake. The bride called to ask how the cake was, and I said, “Fabulous!” She asked if I had taken it to the venue, and I lied through my teeth. By the time we set out, we got caught up in the office traffic. Two people held on to the tiers for dear life. Luckily we were forced to move slowly. When we reached our destination, I was aghast to see men casually strolling around with planks, branches, bolts of cloth but nothing started on the interior décor. I called the manager in a panic and he very soothingly said, “Don’t worry madam, it will all be ready in time.” In the meanwhile, the bride was quite annoyed with me because I wasn’t there to take some photos with her before leaving for church. I screeched up just as she drove in.
Kids are unpredictable, however much you might coach them. A little flower girl once thought she had quite enough of these hairpins pricking into her scalp and pulled off the wreath of flowers from her head and flung it on the ground in the centre of the aisle and stamped her feet on it until it was totally destroyed.
Another little one was fed up of being so hot and went to the back of the church, flung off all her clothes except for her undies and marched up the aisle to the amusement of the congregation.
Yet another little boy walking behind the bride with the ring, kept stopping, curling up his fists and growling right up the aisle. When they asked him later why he did that, he replied, “I’m the ring-bear!”
Another boy heard the altar boy ringing the bell and said loudly, “The ice-cream man’s here! Can I have one?” I’m sure all these incidents make this day even more memorable!

- Honky Tonk Woman.