—by Janelle Lake

As someone who has been playing harp for weddings for over half of my life, I have seen it all…except a runaway bride. I was very excited for this particular wedding. The venue, the Chicago Club, is within walking distance from my home (if I didn’t have a harp), I’m friends with the valet, and the wait staff always has my favorite salad ready for me when I pop in. It was going to be an easy one.

The couple had been dreaming about their big day for months. Real birch trees draped with Swarovski crystals lined the halls of the exclusive club on the Magnificent Mile. The couple tailored a period costume for me for their Renaissance themed wedding. I’d like to think they hired me because of my training, expertise, and musical beauty, but they probably hired me because I have a royal purple harp and that was the color of the wedding. The bride and groom were in gorgeous purple outfits as the “king and queen.” 

My instructions were to play the processional for the wedding party, and when the flower girl finished walking down the aisle, swell and play Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Easy, right? The nine bridesmaids came down the aisle as planned. The ring bearer and flower girl came down the aisle as planned. The huge, wooden doors at the back of the room closed for maximum effect. I swelled…and…nothing. “Maybe they can’t hear me through the wooden doors,” I thought. I swelled with a full ascending and descending arpeggio…nothing. I tried ascending and descending arpeggio plus glisses….nothing. Well, thinking on my feet, I just circle back to the middle of Canon in D and wait. And wait. And loop some more and wait. My iPad times out, which is no biggie because I have this memorized, but everyone is beginning to get restless.  So I switch to some other piece and start improvising. At least five minutes go by, and there is no bride. Everyone is standing around waiting to see what has happened. Finally, the doors swing open. My blistering fingers (from playing five minutes of swells) break into the sixteenth note section of Canon in D and she walks radiantly down the aisle. 

I spend the whole ceremony sheepishly wondering if I did something she wasn’t expecting. What had happened was the bride loved the music and everything so much that she took a deep breath and burst right out of her wedding dress. They were using that time to sew her back into her dress! Live music saved the day! I’d like to see a DJ handle that gracefully. •