Motherzillas, Bridezillas, and the Best Wedding Video

Unless you live under a rock you have seen this video in the last day or so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0

I confess I have watched it several times and every time it makes me smile and cry and just pretty much makes me happy.

This is pretty much how a wedding should go - happiness, celebration and pure unbridled joy.

I kind of have unique perspective, having officiated at a few in a past life. While the ones I participated in never really reached epic Bridezilla levels (btw, who are these people and what makes them think that because it is 'their day' the world needs to revolve around them and they can be rude and abusive to everyone - and why don't the grooms have sense enough to run screaming from these crazy women? And more importantly, how long do you think these marriages actually last?), especially the rehearsals were fraught with tension, tears, and this whacked out sense that everything had to be absolutely perfect..and the world as we know it would end if the bridesmaids spacing as they walked down the aisle was not perfect.

Often the culprit was not the bride herself but the bride's mother. After my first rehearsal when a tiny flowergirl and ringbearer who couldn't have been more than three years old were reduced to tears because they couldn't understand the concept that the flowergirl was not to begin walking until the ringbearer had passed six pews in the church and they wanted to walk together (and I'm not sure they could even count to six) that I instituted a few rules, I probably said them a bit nicer but the general jist was this:

1. I was in charge of the rehearsal. I had met previously with the bride and groom and had a good sense of what they wanted and they knew going in that this was a rule. Suggestions for changes during the rehearsal had to come through the bride and groom. All my brides mentioned afterwards that they appreciated this so much because their mothers had been driving them crazy.

2. Since it was obvious in some cases that the party had started long before the rehearsal and there wasn't a chance in hell that anyone would remember where to stand when the time came, I used the old theater trick of masking tape on the floor to indicate their marks. Simple: find the X with your name on it and stand there.

3. The third rule was the most important. Relax - remember why you are here and this is just 30 minutes of the rest of your life and stuff may go wrong. The groomsman may wake up with an ear infection causing such vertigo that he spends the wedding time in the ER instead of the church. The videographer's equipment may fall with such an impressive crash it sounded like a bomb. A passing thunderstorm my make you have to scream your vows so folks can hear them. There is a lot you can't control in this 30 minutes as well as in life. What better time to have things go to hell when you have your family and friends around supporting you.

All that said, I would have loved to work with the couple in the video. They truly seemed to understand that the day was about joy and happiness and dancing and not whether the flowers were a shade off, or the fake eyelashes were falling off, or the flowergirl could not count to six.