Never choose this song for your wedding.

by BERN MORLEY

When you get married, there are a thousand and one decisions to make.

Church or Beach?

Chicken or Lamb?

Peach Taffeta or Puce Lace?

Stretch Hummer or Cinderella Carriage?

Fireworks or Latin Dancers?

There is one area I, as a young bride over ten years ago, struggled with. My wedding song. *The* Song. The one where you walk down the aisle (if applicable) or into the ceremony to and people sob because it’s just so emotional.  Or the song you dance to and enchant all the guests with the loving scene they are collectively witnessing.

So what in the hell was going on when I was originally thinking of using this?

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It’s a song about animals. And Cannonballs. And television freak shows. Was I intending to shimmy up the carpet to a petrified Phil? Throw in a few fist pumps? I also vividly remember discussing this choice with my two best girlfriends and they gave me the thumbs up. Perhaps they were just agreeing with their clearly unhinged friend for fear of reprisals. We all know how Brides can get.

In fact, a couple of years later we went to a wedding that was held at a very flash golf course. It was a bit bizarre really, because I wasn’t at all close to the bride and groom and Phil had not even laid eyes on them before the wedding day. I think it was a conscience invite because I had recently started working with her after being an acquaintance for years. We all waited, course side,  for the  bride to arrive. She turned up on the back of a  Harley, gracefully removed herself  and then the song started. The song that would accompany her up the “aisle.  It was this.

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Oh yeah. But hey, it was their choice and it fitted in well with them sitting on individual thrones all night and requesting the company of their  guests by appointment only. I shit you not.

Luckily for me, somewhere between becoming a Savage Garden Junkie and walking in to my wedding ceremony I had an epiphany. It was like the common sense gods slapped me on the back of the head and told me to get off myself.

From memory I was listening to a lot of Jeff Buckley at the time, so am unsure how I came up with this, but on a very rainy day in June, 1999, I walked into to greet my husband to be, to this song:

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What was the song you chose or would choose for your wedding?