I was hired by an unnamed party band to play guitar for a wedding reception in North Alabama. I arrived and discovered a first-class venue, with a chapel next door to a large party room. We set up in the party room, and then three members of the six-piece band went next door to the chapel to perform at the actual wedding.
The three band members returned after the wedding, and they told us that the bride was drunk. Seriously, she was drunk? They were adamant; she was very drunk.
How bad could it be, I wondered.
Then people started pouring into the party room, and we began playing tunes. Eventually, the bride and groom arrived and walked onto the stage. The bride was noticeably drunk, and the groom looked nervous. She took a microphone and spoke some incomprehensible gibberish while staggering around the stage. She nearly fell off the elevated stage, but the singer managed to grab her.
After a few toasts, the happy couple started walking through the party room, greeting guests while we played. You could see them from the stage; it was a disaster that moved throughout the room. She kept drinking.
A few hours into the party, the bride staggered back on stage during a song and appeared to be even drunker, if that was possible. She began twerking with the saxophone player before her husband managed to remove her from the stage. Not long after that, the party fizzled out, and the happy couple left for their honeymoon. The husband appeared upset as they left the building.
As we packed our gear, we heard some family members talking about the bride. She’d been drunk at the wedding rehearsal the night before. When I heard that, I was surprised the minister went through with the marriage.
The band and many guests had rooms at a nearby hotel. As we checked in to the hotel after the gig, in the lobby, we saw the bride’s mother. She appeared to be in shock. She spoke with us briefly and mentioned how lovely her daughter was. We all agreed that her daughter was beautiful (she was). We all thought she was a beautiful disaster too, but none of us said that.
The next time I gigged with the band, we all agreed that none of us had ever seen anything like that.