Overture from Candide
Listener Submission: Most Meaningful Wedding Music Story

More Meaningful Wedding Music Stories Arrival of the Queen of Sheba Allegretto in Tandem Water Music Child No More Because Old Love Fools Rush In Moonlight Sonata The Lord's Prayer A Traditional Jewish Marriage Song Llef Susurro Rhosemedrye All Bach The Best Song in the World Perhaps Love A Mother's Blessing Memories Simple Gifts I Will Morning Song In Spite of Ourselves Salvation Army Singers Cats May Safely Sleep Give Yourself To Love How Can I Keep From Singing? Overture from Candide The Servant Song A Hebrew Blessing These Are For You The Lover's Waltz La Rejouissance Erev Shel Shoshanim Toccata You Are the New Day Dixieland Jazz Because Beauty and the Beast Beautiful The Lord's Prayer Somewhere Over the Rainbow How Can I Keep From Singing Devoted to You Promenade Days Together Stand By Me List of All Stories Odes to Joy home

My parents ran a community theater. My husband and I were part of a group of kids who were involved in the theater from the time we were 8 years old. Alan developed a crush on me in about 8th grade. We went out on at least a couple of dates, but I never was as interested in him as he was in me. We kept in sporadic contact after high school, mostly because my mother adored him and kept me informed of his life events. I married, divorced; he married, divorced; and 4 years ago we connected, first by email, then long distance (he was in Dallas, I was in Minnesota). He moved up here in August of 1997, I proposed to him (at a Saint Paul Saints baseball game) in August, 1998, and we married January 2, 1999.

We decided to have the wedding in our hometown in Tennessee. We got permission to get married in the stage of the theater we had worked with so long ago. Half the people attending the wedding were alumni of some show or another. Surprisingly, the only show tune we played was the Overture from Candide—it evoked everything about theater that we loved. We added Mary Chapin Carpenter’s "Sudden Gift of Fate" because it seemed to be true that fate just wouldn’t let us go. We had a few of the requisite classical pieces, Mark Cohen’s "True Companion," and, to celebrate our new life together, Ann Reed’s "State Fair Song" ("Minnesota, Minnesota, we are South of Manitoba . . .") We ended our ceremony with the standard recessional—for about six bars. Then I had slipped "You’re Still the One" by Orleans onto the tape as a surprise for Alan and we danced our way off the stage and back up the aisle.

Patty Gordon
Minneapolis, MN