An Objection, With Slides

The couple had specifically asked the celebrant to skip the objections line. He was elderly, beloved, and running on muscle memory: out it came, the fatal invitation, 'or forever hold your peace,' followed by that traditional half-second of theatrical silence.

Into which a chair scraped.

The groom's ex-girlfriend — invited, incomprehensibly, by the groom's mother, who 'had always liked her' — stood up in row three, produced a laptop from a tote bag, opened it with the composure of a keynote speaker, and asked, and I quote the whole church's collective memory: 'Is there a projector, or should I just narrate?'

There was no projector. She narrated.

She had prepared — we pieced the structure together afterwards, the way survivors reconstruct a storm — approximately twelve minutes of material, organised chronologically, on the theme of why the groom remained, spiritually and legally-in-her-opinion, hers. Exhibits included a 2019 text thread, a concert ticket stub she held aloft like evidence at trial, and a shared playlist 'he never removed me from.'

She reached minute two. The maid of honor rose from the front like weather, walked back, and did something none of us expected: sat beside her, warmly, and said, 'Show me?' The ex, wrong-footed by kindness, angled the laptop. The maid of honor studied the screen, nodded — and closed it, gently, keeping her hand flat on the lid, the way you keep a hand on a coffin. 'Great. Chapter's finished,' she said, at volume. 'Let's see how the sequel starts.' And she turned to the celebrant and said, 'They do.'

The church applauded. The ex, to her partial credit, stayed for dinner, got extensively drunk, and was heard telling the bartender the playlist thing 'sounded worse out loud.'

The couple's first dance song, chosen months earlier, was — of course, of course — from that playlist. Nobody told the bride until the honeymoon. She laughed until she had to sit on the hotel floor.