I Knew the Whole Wedding Before the Ceremony

I went as a plus-one, reluctantly, to the wedding of two people I had never met — my colleague's cousins, in a village two hours away. I knew nobody but my colleague. I had no stake, no anticipation, nothing to project. Which is why what happened has no comfortable explanation.

From the moment we walked into the church, I knew it. Not vaguely. I knew the order of service before I opened it. I leaned to my colleague during the processional and murmured that the bride would come in to a piece of music that wasn't the usual one — a particular cello thing — and she did. I knew the groom would fumble the vows and have to restart the second line, and he did, to fond laughter. I knew, and this is where my colleague started staring at me, that the ring would be dropped — the best man would drop it, it would roll, a bridesmaid would retrieve it from under the front pew — and it happened, beat for beat, the roll, the pew, the bridesmaid.

I sat through a wedding I had never attended, for strangers, knowing each moment a breath before it came, like a film I'd seen once and half-forgotten and was now watching again with the memories arriving just ahead of the scenes.

The best man's speech was the worst of it. I knew his opening joke — a specific, slightly off-colour line about the groom's stag do and a traffic cone — and I whispered it to my colleague before he stood up, word for word, and she went pale and moved away from me at the table, actually moved her chair, and when he delivered it, verbatim, cone and all, she would not look at me for the rest of the meal.