Brenda’s Wedding

In 1972 my baby sister Brenda decided to get married so I offered to have her reception at my place in the park. She and my parents agreed and we began to make plans. 

My house was a little small but if the guest list got too big we could always spill out into the park.  It was a beautiful setting and many newly weds already used the location for their wedding photos. 

At the outset it wasn’t going to be a particularly fancy affair. There wouldn’t be any expensive caterers or rented décor. Like all the Leeson family functions, my mother and sisters would kick in and provide the food and spend a little time making my bachelor pad a little more presentable. Mom would make the cake and my sister Noreen would decorate it. A few yards of crepe paper streamers and some tinsel and we would be in business. 

The date was set and a church was found a few blocks away from the southern entrance to the park. 

About a week before the big day Brenda decided that she would like to be taken from the church to the reception in one of my horse drawn vehicles. It was an excellent idea; I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it.

I had several buggies to choose from but when I hauled the best one I owned out of the shed I realized that it was not really suitable or fancy enough for an occasion as important as my sister’s wedding. 

Luckily, I knew a man who had just imported an antique wedding coach from Germany.  I had recently loaned him a pair of quiet, city-broke horses so he could carry out an advertising promotion for Simpson Sears and he owed me big time. 

It took a bit of persuasion but he reluctantly agreed to loan me the coach. 

He delivered the rig to my stables three days before the wedding, reminding me that he had about twenty-five thousand hard-earned dollars tied up in it and that it's loss would ruin him. 

“Don’t worry Udo, I’ll handle it with kid gloves” I reassured him. He didn’t seem convinced but he gave his pride and joy one last loving pat and reluctantly drove away.

I had a close look at the coach as I was backing into my garage for the night and I had to admit that it was truly magnificent. It was snow white with brass fittings and carriage lamps. The driver’s seat was at the front, perched high above a glass windscreen that protected the ornate passenger cabin. It’s pristine condition belied the hundred years or so it had been in existence. It looked like something Cinderella would ride in and I knew Brenda would be over the moon when she saw it but I also knew that I would, indeed, have to be very, very careful with it.

In fact I decided that I had better not trust the driving to anyone else on the wedding day.  I would drive the coach myself. Of course I would bring someone along to hold the horses while I was in the church attending the ceremony but then I would nip outside and put on my top hat and coachman’s cloak and drive the happy couple to the reception myself.

Everything fell into place and when the wedding day rolled around everyone assembled at the church; my other sisters being the last to arrive because they had been busy all morning preparing food and decorating my house. I had given some thought to the team of horses I would use. All of the teams had been quiet and working well of late but I was still experiencing a tinge of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrom from my wild ride down Leslie Avenue so I immediately eliminated the horses I’d been using on that fateful day.

I decided instead to use a pair of foolproof bays that my father had trained. Dad assured me that they were as quiet as mice. “They're more like insurance policies than horses," he bragged. 

I gave myself plenty of time to get to the church that morning; I had arranged for the parks superintendent to remove an iron post that was normally placed in the center of the narrow bridge that crossed the Don River; it was kept there to stop cars and trucks using the bridge and only removed on special occasions. After crossing the bridge I reined in the horses and watched while the super replaced the post locking it in place. When he was finished I thanked him and reminded him that I would be calling from the church when the ceremony was over so that he would have time to remove the post again to let me and the rest of the wedding party back across the river then I tipped my top hat and was off.

As I drove my horses through the residential streets on the way to the church that morning it appeared that Dad had been as good as his word. The geldings trotted along like real gentlemen and never showed any inclination to shy or misbehave. 

When I arrived at the church I turned the horses over to my stable man Dick and headed inside. The pews on both sides of the aisle were both occupied, but the Leeson clan on the bride's side of the church was clearly superior in numbers. All my sisters and their husbands and children were present decked out in their ‘Sunday Go’in to Meetin’ finery and my parents were sitting in the front row, Mom sporting a tight Tony perm and Dad wearing the oversized dentures he only used on special occasions.

The wedding went off without a hitch, vows were shared, people cried and kids misbehaved; it was all quite normal.

I nipped out of the church ahead of everybody else and slipped into my coachman’s attire then waited while Brenda and her new husband John ran the gauntlet of confetti tossers.

Then couple was hustled over and into the coach and the rest of the family ran for their cars. As I glanced back and down through the glass panel that separated us I could see my sister comfortably seated, flowers in hand with her wedding dress and crinolines filling the small compartment and covering most of the lower half of her new husband. 

She looked up at me smiling serenely then nodded so amidst the hoots and hollers of the crowd off we went. 

The coach had been a dream to drive on the way to the church virtually silent on its rubber shod wheels but as we set out it immediately started to make a strange rattling noise. I couldn’t figure out what was going on at first but then I realized that some of the revelers had secretly attached several tin cans to the back axel. 

The horse perked up their ears and danced a bit but after I gave them a quiet word and they started to settle down. They were still a little apprehensive but it would have been manageable if the column of twenty or so cars following us hadn’t decided to follow the age old tradition of hanging out of the car windows and shouting while they leaned on their horns.

The horses immediately responded to the cacophony by breaking into a fast trot and then a canter. Clutching the reins in one hand I took off my top hat, turned around and waved it frantically at the pursuing vehicles. They seemed to think that I was trying to inspire and encourage them so even the people in the line up who would have had the good taste to refrain from behavior of this sort joined in and an unholy din of shouting, blaring horns and rattling cans ensued. 

It was too much for the horses; they totally lost it and took off at breakneck speed heading for the stables. There wasn’t much I could do, our fates were sealed, we were doomed. The only saving grace was that the team seemed to remember their way home and were negotiating all the turns on their own; albeit with the coach tipped up on two wheels and threatening to turn over in the process. When we hit the steep hill that led down into the valley and the horses felt the extra weight on their rear ends they pulled out all the stops and bee-lined  for the stable, hell bent for leather. That’s when I remembered the metal post in the center of the bridge; I hadn’t phoned to have it removed. 

Well that was that, it was all over, and there was no way of stopping the stampeding horses now that they could scent their stable. 

The horses could pass either side of that solid post but the coach could not. My borrowed twenty-five thousand dollar coach would be reduced to match wood and me and my passengers would probably be pitched over the bridge rail and into the Don River. At the very least the coach would be sliced into two frank pieces and the bride and groom dragged independently to their destination. It was too much to bear so I just closed my eyes and gripped the driver’s seat in anticipation of the impact. 

There was an impact but it wasn’t on the bridge. For some reason the post had been removed again while I was away and not immediately put back. The impact I felt was a result of the horses coming to a sudden halt as their noses crashed into the stable door. I ended up ass over teakettle in between them, shaken, but glad to be alive. The newlyweds had crashed their heads into the windscreen and both were disheveled and looked a little worse for wear but they also were otherwise unharmed. 

As I helped my little sister out of the carriage I noted that she had lost her bridal blush, her face was ashen white and her hairdo had exploded into a bizarre puffy lopsided coif that was sprinkled liberally with the remains of her bouquet. After shaking herself off and straightening her wedding dress she, in true Brenda form, was the first to appreciate the humor of the situation and broke out laughing hysterically. 

A good time was had by all at the reception that evening but as it turned out the marriage itself was doomed to failure and short-lived. They were quits before two years were out. 

I never told them about my fears concerning the post on the bridge or how close they were to being parted a whole lot sooner.