Moonlight Sonata
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

We didn't know whether we'd get married in a church or not since John was raised Lutheran and I was raised Catholic and neither of us are frequent church-goers. After hemming and hawing over all the locations available for wedding ceremonies in the Twin Cities, my husband opened a St. Paul Yellow Pages and basically chose the Virginia Street Church by closing his eyes and randomly pointing to an entry in the Wedding Chapels and Ceremonies section.

We visited the church and loved the quaint building, the location (corner of Virginia and Selby), and the fact that the Swedenborgian pastor was very open to whatever kind of ceremony we wanted. We chose mostly secular music—a little Cole Porter, a little number my husband and friends compose—but we thought we'd better throw a church song in there for good measure. We chose the Lord's Prayer mainly because the vocalist, John's cousin Kristy, had a lot of practice singing that song.

It was an extremely humid and still day - calm before the storm it turns out. The church had no air conditioning and everyone at the alter and in the pews was using the programs to fan themselves to get the air moving until we could burst through the doors and down the street to get a cold beer at the air conditioned reception hall. When the intro to the Lord's Prayer started, the wind started to blow and a door that was propped open suddenly slammed shut. Some of the hanging lights in the church started to swing and a hard rain began to fall. As Kristy belted out those high, loud notes at, "AND THE POWER AND THE GLO-RY FOR-EV-ER!", the church shook from the thunder.

The ceremony ended only about 10 minutes later, but the thunderstorm had already stopped. When we stepped out of the building and into the street where our friends and family were blowing bubbles at us, there was a beautiful double rainbow in the sky. I have to say that for a pretty laid-back, non-religious couple like John and I, our church wedding turned out to be pretty dramatic. I guess we chose the right song . . .

Melissa Sullivan
St. Paul, MN