Strange Weddings Call for Strange Guest Lists

The couple couldn’t make up the guest list. They didn’t have enough friends. There were very few attending friends and family members: not enough to fill out more than a couple of rows. The venue was hired. It was grotesque in a gothic sort of way. It was an odd place for a wedding, but weddings have been held in odder places than that.

“Hey!” shouted Carl, across the aisle, “Why are you all so deathly quiet?”

The abruptness of this question made everyone fall into uncomfortable mumbling. Not a word could be made out in the vast theatre. The eaves were rattling in the storm that raged around them. They were like mice crammed into a corner, cowering from the giant gaze of a cat.

The organ sounded. It wasn’t playing a traditional love song, or even a recognisable classic. It sounded like the organist was bashing the keys: improvisation at its poorest. What was at the heart of the matter was that nobody cared about the wedding, but there was still an inexplicable air of anger about the place, like a boxing match on the point where the “f” is pronounced in fight.

The strangers occupying the seating didn’t know where to put themselves. There had been no one to usher them to their seats, to choose a side of the aisle for them, to tell them where to go. It felt like a volcano waiting to erupt: this bizarre wedding. Bizarre with a capital “B.”

Melanie was on the bride’s side of the room. She’d never seen her before. She’d met the groom briefly, but she could barely have made a composite of his features, had the police demanded she do it. He had been very bubbly; she’d noticed that. He was like one of those blond, angelic kids that no harm ever befalls. They live in their special enshrouded existence preserved by doting parents. Often, they will be the first to hurl objects at their peers beneath tabletops, smiling sweetly as they do it. Where there are no witnesses, there are no crimes, as far as they’re concerned.

Melanie and Carl met glances. Then, they looked away with the shyness of strangers; the kind of strangers that respect social norms - but they couldn’t help returning to each other again and again. There was a level mumble throughout the room, not a word of it audible. Everyone was talking to their compatriots, but were they really that? They’d been foisted together, into the confined pews in this amphitheatre, but were they seated in the right spots? No one knew.

Beside Carl, sat a lady with a heady odour of perfume. That was what it was, thought Carl – an odour, because it could not be called pleasant. She was tight-lipped and she sat as upright as the wire of an electric fence. She was beautiful in an aged kind of way, but she looked very unhappy. Carl wanted to know her life history, but it felt ill-advised to ask for it. They would be released in twenty minutes whenever the entire debacle was over. In his mind, he aimed for that point, like a target marked with the best possible exit route.

The organ music built in momentum and the groom was seen emerging from behind the pulpit. He waited to the side of it, next to the minister and several other unidentified characters. Then the moment of truth, or at least, of anticipation, arrived. The organ changed to an upbeat number; something closer to the Wedding March, but that still couldn’t be called that.

She swayed up the aisle, like her feet didn’t touch the ground. She moved with the poise and elegance of a dancer, completely masked by her veil. She was wearing a simple frock in an off-white colour. It looked like a delicate antique, but not a wedding dress. Clearly, this couple wanted to play around with everyone’s expectations, however subtly they subverted them.

She started to rush forwards, as if she was in a race to get to the front of the room. There were some looks of alarm that spread throughout the crowd. The only word that could be used to describe the entire scenario was “bizarre.” Melanie looked over at the other side of the aisle. She was torn about where she should be. For some reason, she felt worse off for being on the bride’s side of the room. Every seat was filled. The others all observed the room with that same look of displacement.

The bride got to the front of the room and yelled at the top of her voice “stop!” She flung the veil back from her face and revealed the face beneath. It was pasty white like she had applied chalky face paint to it. Her eyes were drawn on with black liner that exaggerated every unnatural line of her being. Most notably, fangs protruded from her upper lip. She had a habit of chewing her lips, of showing the points of her teeth as she did it. She smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasing smile; it was a surreal one. Her partner met her look with something like admiration. His curls bounced every time he moved his head. He looked beyond cherubic.

The crowd were on tenterhooks. They wanted an explanation for their strange invitation. They knew it would be a defining moment of their lives that wouldn’t be quickly forgotten. Their attention was rapt. The minister introduced Vaudevilla and her partner Anthony. She silenced him for a moment, moving towards Anthony’s neck with the unfaltering approach of a killer. She widened her mouth and her fangs plunged into his neck. He called out in pain, and then, he went into a weary silence, a resignation as she drank from him. The pink colour drained from his cheeks, and it warmed up Vaudevilla’s. She looked much more human then, despite her sharp teeth.

The guests in the front row began to leave one by one, like a house of cards that slowly tumbles, as if recorded, falling in slow motion. One after another, the guests evacuated the room, unsure of whether to validate one another at the sight they’d just seen, or whether to walk, parting as they went, complicit in their pretence that it had never happened.