For some reason, I have always rather enjoyed weddings. Newfoundland weddings, anyway.

Newfoundland weddings, even the ‘small’ones, tend to feature huge crowds of mismatched people, a surplus of food, booze and tunes, and some really funny speeches. The sort of stupid garter throwing and cake smashing bullshit that happens elsewhere never seems to happen here. Instead, if you are really lucky, it will all finish with a scrap in the parking lot. The music is all over the place, with hip-hop battling it out with two-step waltzes. It is a great pleasure to watch the old people sweep around the floor, but all ages are expected to participate equally, and it is one of the few occasions on which I can be compelled to dance.

I have been to a few memorable ones over the years. One I attended sometime  ago featured over a thousand people. Half of them had not even been invited. As the couple were both from small towns, the entire population of both just showed up. Cue much hilarity.

Another one I particularly enjoyed, featured speeches speculating on the groom’s surprising lack of interest in getting married at all, with one ‘friend’ going so far as to suggest (in dead seriousness), to the party’s horror, that the groom was actually gay. I was sad to have missed one buddies’ wedding, which ended with one of his (not particularly young, or shapely) aunts performing an impromptu striptease on the head table. Good times.

More than once I have tried to capture one of these events in a song, but they never seem to get anywhere. Sentiment and realism are tough to get together in one lyric, and harder to get right. In the meantime, I can take solace in this song.

Natalie Merchant has pretty much disavowed her decade in 10,000 Maniacs, but she wrote some great songs in those years, and in my opinion, her solo work has suffered from a lack of the band’s sense of humour. Mind you, it is hard to blame her. Playing in a band with a half dozen older guys must have been weird, but the sometimes jarring juxtaposition between her thoughtful feminism and their rock and roll gusto made the band’s sound compelling.

My Sister Rose is a simple song about Merchant’s sister Rose’s wedding. I absolutely love it. In a sly, vaguely detached tone, Merchant describes her Italian family’s wedding reception. I am not quite sure if she is being sarcastic, or just sort of amazed by it all. The lyrics are simple, but very, very clever. Both sincere and silly, they are like nothing else in her repertoire. The melody slips and slides like a Gypsy Kings out-take. Instead of a real hook, it features the sort of crappy/brilliant mandolin line guys who can’t play mandolin always seem to come up with. Topping it all off is the chorus: the band just kind of barrels over her, five gruff men singing these rather sad ‘ooo’s’ and ‘aahs’, embarrassment dripping off every note.

Everyone admires the bride at weddings, but I always watch the men. They always look painfully awkward in their rented tuxedoes, hair gelled back, frozen smiles, like schoolboys waiting outside the principal's office. Unintentionally, I suspect, the male Maniacs put this moment into music. While Merchant floats up the aisle in a pretty dress, they linger at the back of the church, hands in pockets, shuffling their feet, cringing at her unabashed romanticism. You can almost hear her laughing at them; in light of her mega-fame, and their ultimate slide into obscurity, the song can be seen as a metaphor for their whole musical marriage.

And as one sometimes does at a wedding, when you see some fellow making what appears to be a dreadful decision, you kind of feel sorry for them.

Big, big plans are being made,
For my sister’s wedding day
We’ll have a ball, at the ‘Sons of Roma’ Hall
Family, friends, come one and all

Then they cut the five tier cake,
‘That Colucci, he can bake’,
A frosted tower of sugar & flour,
For the couple of the hour.

My Sister Rose, 10,000 Maniacs