(The Nationalist, 29 June 2007)
Last year I was conducting a wedding ceremony in a church some distance from the parish I’m based in. Twenty minutes after we were due to begin, there was still no sign of the bride. Pre-wedding nerves on her part? No; the limousines hired from the taxi company had been late in arriving at her house. Traffic problems, they said.
Also last year, a bride-to-be told me of her difficulties with getting an Order of Service ready. The secretarial service who were setting out and printing the booklet let her down several times, promising to have it ready, but not doing so. They said they were very busy.
At another wedding there was no music, leaving the ceremony flat and dull. The musician/singer, paid for in advance, had failed to show up, despite having been reminded that morning, and giving an assurance that he would be there.
At yet another wedding, a couple had arranged to release doves from the front of the church after the ceremony. For their big day, they had thought of others and wanted to express their hope for peace in the world, a generous and good-natured thought. But those with responsibility for bringing the doves failed to show, leaving the couple disappointed that their gesture of goodwill to the world had not materialized.
More recently, I rehearsed a wedding ceremony with a couple and their families. The best man was late for it. I asked him to be sure not to be late for the wedding as well, and explained to him some of the jobs he had to do on the day. He had to contact the bride’s house from the church to find out when she was leaving and get the guests into the church before she came, so that she could make a dignified processional entry, and not merely walk in after the others. He also had to see to the distribution of the Order of Service booklets beforehand, and to make arrangements about candles for a simple but meaningful ceremony. When the day came, both he and the groom were late. He had made none of the necessary arrangements. He appeared to think nothing of it until I said to him that it was his job to be there to do those things. He then had the grace to apologize.
At another wedding, the bride was on her way to the church with her father when the best man found it necessary to ask her to delay her arrival because most of the guests had not yet come. The two families were there, but not the others. The bride had taken the trouble to get there on time, but the guests had not. When they did come, some fifteen to twenty minutes after the Mass was due to have begun, they stood outside, taking each others’ pictures. When the best man asked them to go into the church, as they were delaying the bride, they said she had not yet come. He pointed to her car, which, at this stage, had driven up and down the road outside the church several times, still waiting for the guests to go in. They said they’d only be another minute, but stayed five or more minutes, still taking pictures, while keeping the bride and everyone else waiting. They seemed to think they had a right to dampen a bride’s big day and to waste other people’s time.
Punctuality is said to be the courtesy of kings. What does one call the behaviour described above?