I’ve been reminded, lately, of this story from my wedding. It always comes up when brides ask how we move about during the ceremony, but somehow the mid-meeting telling seems oversharey and inappropriate. So from now on, I can direct them to this blog post instead.

So it’s March 2007. I’m in the white dress and Katsumi, miraculously, has trimmed his beard. We’re kneeling on the altar of the Catholic church I’ve attended since childhood, and I’m struggling to understand the West African priest who is presiding over the ceremony. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I spy something large and spidery clambering across the floor with a videocamera in its hand. It’s Pusser, who you might remember from my many misadventures in North Dakota. By the time we parted ways he’d have been my boss for nearly ten years, although I didn’t know it at the time, and I had specifically NOT asked him to shoot my wedding. But shoot it he would, apparently, because there he was, crawling one-handed across the altar, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“PUSSER!!” I hissed, gesturing furiously in the direction of the baptismal font. “MOVE!!” I didn’t dare to glance back at my mother.

The priest looked down and stared bemusedly at Pusser,who shrugged and slunk away.

Some minutes later, there was a bang and a LOUD crash, which would later be reported to me as the landing of the same unabashed would-be videographer after he tripped mightily over several pews trying to get a canted angle of my bridesmaids. “He was like, literally AIRBORNE,” I’d hear later, during cocktail hour. “Unreal!”

I stopped working with him rather abruptly in 2009, The Year of Trouble, just three months before my marriage officially dissolved. But I still love this story, and so many other things about my wedding day! And despite all the cringeworthy moments, I’m so glad to have it on video. Well – most of it, anyway.