Isn't It Romantic?

Owen continued, “And Natalie is absolutely exquisite in a St. Tropez model bridal gown with spaghetti straps and a full skirt with a matte satin finish.”

Natalie hooked her wrists around her French husband’s neck and softly moved with him as she sang along with Ella, while Opal gripped the handle of a white movie screen and pulled it fully extended as Mrs. Christiansen switched on a high school projector and clicked to Biggy’s hokey slide photograph of Natalie, Iona, and Mrs. Christiansen crowding into an upstairs dresser mirror as they put the final touches to their hair.

Mrs. Christiansen clicked to a slide in which Dick, Owen, Carlo, and the Reverend Picarazzi were making faces as they gripped Pierre by the waist, as if trying to pull him back into the church. She then clicked to a slide of Natalie and Iona putting on garters and showing plenty of gam. Opal, Nell, Onetta, and Ursula looked on with hands to their mouths, as if shocked.

On the dance floor, Dick swung and dipped Iona as Mrs. Christiansen clicked to the wedding ceremony and a slide of Pierre standing with his hand out, waiting for the ring, while Dick, with both his trouser pockets yanked out, pretended to have lost it. She clicked to the next slide. Same pose, but roles reversed.

In the next slide, Owen and Ursula hefted feed shovels loaded with rice. They were mugging for the camera as they waited for the happy couples to descend the church steps. Mrs. Christiansen clicked again. Natalie had tossed her garter. In the scrum for it, the trucker from Sidney held it out of Carlo’s reach.

And now Natalie and Pierre were kissing, and all of Seldom had joined them on the dance floor, Carlo with Ursula, the Reverend Picarazzi with Owen’s Aunt Opal, Onetta with old Nell, all singing along with Ella Fitzgerald’s “Isn’t it romantic?”

And Biggy crouched to take a gag photograph of Owen seemingly drunk, his head flat on the table, and tipped over beside his gaping mouth was a high-shouldered bottle of red wine that would soon be distributed by the firm of Smith et Fils.