own stamp on wedding tradition (“Every bride needs something old, something new, something borrowed, and everything fabulous!”), the disasters were all hypothesis, easily thwarted by the proper application of platitude and exclamation point. The lights overhead began blinking on and off, a signal that the library was about to close. I proceeded to the exit. There are, of course, less trivial impediments to the marriage of true minds. The recent indictment of a Michigan groom for allegedly leaving his bride to drown during their Australian honeymoon; the abandonment at the altar of a New York City bride who, at the reception now held to celebrate singlehood regained, shuffled bravely to the defiant strains of Gloria Gaynor; the well-documented story of the groom who toasted his guests with compromising photographs of the bride and best man left beneath every chair in the reception hall—these and countless other nuptial misfortunes seem to justify the smug proprieties that betoken the successful exchange of vows. But the motives behind such derelictions are easily attributed. There is nothing of the supernatural in a spouse’s greed or suspicion. Nature has proven itself to be largely polygamous; we are one of the few species to practice monogamy and the only one, as far as we know, of sufficient intelligence—or lack thereof—to codify biological imperatives. The best-known—albeit fictional—paranormal wedding narrative must certainly be Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” though the wedding is more of a framing device for the Mariner’s tale of avenging spirits and monsters at sea: It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three “By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me? “The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: May’st hear the merry din.” [The Mariner] holds him with his skinny hand, “There was a ship,” quoth he. Of more recent provenance is the tale of another wedding guest who, to lighten the onus of a long reception line, decided to share a quaint and only slightly risqué bit of wedding night wisdom with the bride and groom. Having embraced the newlyweds, he withdrew slightly, keeping one hand on each of their shoulders.
56 · The Paranormal Guide to Wedding Etiquette