In the absence of a piano, the couple might need to use some recorded wedding ceremony music. In the absence of a piano, a home ceremony might lack the beauty of a church ceremony. When a home does contain a piano, then that usually adds to the cost of the wedding. Normally, the pianist could command more than a token amount of money.
All of those concerns were avoided by one Pennsylvania bride. That bride had once been taken voice lessons from a local woman. She and the voice teacher had become good friends. So when that voice student decided to have a wedding ceremony at home, she knew that she could count on her teacher to play the wedding ceremony music.
That lucky bride had a perfect spot for a small wedding. The living room in her home held a lovely baby grand piano. That same living room had two entrances—one from the hallway and one from the back porch. Therefore, as the wedding music sounded, the bride could enter from the hallway, and the groom could enter from the porch.
The wedding music used that day included a number of love songs. Most of them were love songs from various musicals. Many of the songs selected by the pianist and bride had earlier been sung by the bride at a school concert or in a school musical. Some of the wedding music was also familiar to the groom, who played in the Army band.
That bride could have had her own personal trumpet player on the morning of her wedding. That, however, would have meant depending on the most nervous man at the ceremony—her father. In fact, the bride did not even feel right about asking her father to say anything during the ceremony.
The only thing that they lacked that day was a tape recorder. No one recorded that wedding music. No one recorded the vows of the bride and groom. Fortunately, a number of the guests brought cameras, and they took pictures of events before and after the ceremony.
So the sister who missed the ceremony did have a chance to see some of what she missed. She did see the cake, part of the outdoor reception. She saw how the cake had been covered with a veil, a fitting way to keep out the flies. She did see how the caterers had prepared a meal in the home’s kitchen. She did not, however, have a way to match any of the pictures with music. She could not hear a recording of the wedding music that was played on that morning.
That wedding took place at a time well before the introduction of home recording devices. Now such recording devices pick-up sounds, in addition to putting the whole wedding scene in a digitized version. Thanks to such recordings, present-day weddings can easily be replayed for any missing friends or relatives.