Photo by Meredith Lord via Jolene & Joseph Relaxed New Zealand Riverside Wedding
I couldn’t help but include Jolene’s walk down the aisle in this roundup, the story is one of the most emotional. Originally choosing “On This Day” by the Sami Sisters, her future husband had a surprise in store.
Joseph fills us in on it. “I had been planning singing Jolene down the aisle for almost a year. It took a while trying to find the perfect song and in the end I decided on “You are so beautiful” by Joe Cocker – but with a few words changed around.
Every time Jolene would leave the house, I’d practice it. It’s quite a simple song which I thought would be best to help manage my nerves on the day. Throughout our wedding planning and at our rehearsal the day before our wedding, Jolene thought that she’d be walking into the song “On this day” by the Sami Sisters (a NZ trio who are relatives of Jolene’s sister-in-law). I had only told one of my mates (Damian – who was controlling our music for the ceremony) on the morning of the wedding about the song I was going to sing.
When I got to the ceremony venue, I told our photographer and videographer so that they could capture the moment. The videographer quickly mic’d me up and did a few mic tests while our guests were all mingling around waiting for the bride to arrive. The bridesmaids walked into the song “Come With Me” (acapella version by Shai) and then Jolene heard the start of the song “On This Day”.
After a few seconds of that song starting, I caught a glimpse of Jolene walking through the trees. Everyone at this time was facing towards Jolene. At this moment I knew that if I wasn’t feeling it and was too nervous I could just let this song play out and go with the original plan. But I knew that this moment would never come again and knew what I had to do. I signaled to Damian who then quickly changed the song on his iPad to the instrumental backing track of “You are so beautiful”. Everyone heard the awkward change of song but Jolene kept walking. The bridesmaids all turned to Damian wondering what was going on.
I then grabbed the mic stand that was in front of the celebrant (even he was wondering what was going on), put it in front of me and faced straight towards Jolene and her Dad were walking. I then began to sing “You are so beautiful, Jolene”. I’m glad that I kept it to quite a simple song to sing because it turned out to be quite hard doing it on the day. So many nerves up to that moment especially with no sleep at all the night before and I hadn’t practiced it at the rehearsal so I didn’t know how the mic and speakers would sound. I just kept it raw, real and in one take. Just how I wanted it to occur and I didn’t want anyone to know. I had a plan and it all worked out. I love how she was genuinely surprised. Everyone was surprised including my groomsmen, the bridesmaids, the celebrant and all my immediate family who were at the rehearsal. I’ll never forget the look on her face. Her head tilted to her left and her loving smile ear to ear.”
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