WEDDING PIANO FIASCO

The bride reached the aisle, and the pianist couldn't find "Here comes the bride."

For one church musician, that was the moment a wedding nearly derailed. The poster says they are a "fairly good pianist," the kind of person in a community church who accompanies people often and plays there weekly. "I am by no means professional," they noted, but they were known for being able to handle a piano part when needed.

So when they met someone at a church activity who was getting married the very next week and needed a pianist, they said yes. They had never played for a wedding before, but the request seemed straightforward enough. A few days later, the bride reached out with three songs she wanted for the walk down the aisle, including the classic bridal march, the familiar "Here comes the bride."

The pianist printed the music at home, but the printer ran out of paper before the bridal march page came out. No problem, they thought: that one would be on the iPad.

Wedding day arrived, and they got there early to play background music before the ceremony started. Then the schedule slipped. While everyone waited, the iPad refused to connect to the internet. With nothing else to do, the pianist started searching for songs on their phone and sight-reading them as they went.

When the groom's family and attendants began walking in, they switched quickly to the music chosen for that part. That went fine. Then came the moment they had been bracing for. They were told the bride was about to enter.

"I couldn't find the bridal march!!!!!" they wrote.

It was nowhere.

They tried to redownload it on their phone, but the phone froze and only showed the first two lines. "I stumbled through that," the poster said. The bride still walked down the aisle, but the planned entrance music was a disaster in the pianist's mind.

After that, the ceremony itself went smoothly. The rest of the service passed without issue, and they managed to play the outro from the printed music. But by then the embarrassment had already settled in. On the way home, they replayed the whole thing and finally figured out what had gone wrong: the iPad had been on a different music page the entire time, and the pianist had forgotten because the songs had been prepared ahead of time.

"I feel absolutely horrible about this and it is my most embarrassing moment in my life," they said. "I slunk out" after the ceremony and called it "my debacle."

"Luckily," they added, "I don't think anyone's going to ask me to play for a wedding any time soon."