At first, she thought maybe she’d imagined it. But the photographs confirmed it: a series of blurry, ceiling-fan shots; her dress with a jagged rip; one single photo of the flower girl mid-bird-dance. Still, when she showed them to others, they swore the pictures must have been from some other event.

“Harold’s retirement, maybe,” someone suggested.

So Marianne carried the memory herself. At anniversaries, when people asked if she remembered her vows, she’d chuckle and think of the ringtone blaring. At family dinners, when someone praised the caterer, she thought fondly of the Spreadsheet Soufflé. When her daughter asked about the “romantic first dance,” she had to resist explaining how she nearly stepped on a flapping flower girl.

It became her secret treasure.

And maybe that was fitting. Weddings weren’t supposed to be about flawless gowns or solemn vows. They were about the absurdity of promising to love someone when you knew life was full of pratfalls, punch bowls, and lost eyebrows.

Whenever her husband teased her about her laugh the way it bubbled out at the worst times—she thought back to that day and knew: she had chosen exactly right.