THE BRIDE SWORE BLUE

She also wore Nikes and her maid of honour

weighed in at 3501b: Roger McFallon attends

a cowboy wedding on the Canadian prairie

Southern Alberta IN the small prairie church, a distant rumble, reminiscent of spring thunder, accompanied the opening chords of Mendelssohn's Wedding March. As the double doors from the vestry opened, the rumble grew louder. The 3501b maid of honour, smiling cherubically, moved slowly down the vibrating aisle, ahead of the ringbearer, the flower maiden and the bride. The bride, who in gentler times would have been described as bonny, was a sylph compared with her maid of honour. Perhaps the choice had been deliberate.

The bridegroom and best man stood nervously with the priest at the altar, ready to receive the bride from her parents. Candlelight provided the only illumination, reflecting off the huge silver buckles on the wide leather belts, tightened to straining point around the men's jeans. The best man, who sported a full, 19th-century, drooping moustache, wore a belt buckle bearing the inscription 'Gott Mit Uns' . He professed to no religious belief. 'Won it in a crap game,' he boasted, in his gravelly, basso profundo voice at a beer-and-pizza party after the rehearsal, as we exchanged fears about the flooring in the old church. 'I don't think this flooring has had as much pressure since we planted Charlie MacGregor,' he said. 'Charlie and his casket must've weighed in at 550; mind you, it was distributed over a wider area than tonight,' he added knowingly.

As the bride entered, the congregation stood and the two cowboys at the altar removed their large John B. Stetson hats, a gentlemanly gesture not lost on the congregation and the bride's family. Soft-spoken murmurs of approval rippled around the church: 'We alus knew he wuz a genelmun.'

Apart from Mendelssohn's Wedding March, the choice of music was 'cowboy mournful'. Songs — all accompanied by a guitar, pronounced `gitter' by the best man — lamenting a lost love or a train crash, a dead calf, a drowning, a lost 'clawg' or a hanging were amplified tinnily by the church's inadequate sound system. They seemed in questionable taste, especially the one about a suicide by hanging: three months earlier, the groom's younger brother had hanged himself.

A wraithlike, artistic-looking young woman with hair down to her knees floated about with a camera. I could just make her out in the gloom, behind the faint but romantic glow cast around the altar. There was no sign of a flash as the shutter clicked, which made me wonder.

The ceremony over — the couple had opted for the short rather than the long service, five versus 12 minutes — and the signing formalities completed, there was a rush for the exits; not for the taking of photographs, but so that those who wished to could light up. Indeed, the groom had had to caution those guests unfamiliar with church ways that smoking during the service was a no-no.

My wife Elaine and I made our way through the smokescreen outside the church and walked the short distance to the community hall, where the reception was being held. I seemed to be the only male not wearing Western boots and hat. I almost expected to hear the jangle of spurs and to breathe that unmistakable aroma of cattle and horses. In fact, the only genuine cowboy present was the best man, who was a wrangler on a 50,000-acre cattle ranch. The other 60 or so males, despite their Western boots, hats and copious leather, denim and buckles, were all wannabes, and the closest any of them had been to livestock was looking at the front cover of Horse and Rider and the Western Cattleman.

A small man in his sixties, who had known the bride 'all her life', operated the music system — a complicated-looking tape player and computer, which stored 2,000 Western songs. I expressed disbelief that there were that many, and was rewarded with a look that suggested that I had just crawled out from under a rock.

Dancing, smoking, shouting, screaming and general mayhem indicated that all was well and going to plan. The bride had forsaken her patent-leather, white-and-lilac `cfm' shoes with the six-inch heels in favour of Nike 'air-heels' in which she danced enthusiastically. Her wedding dress, from Cattle Kate's Emporium in Arizona, USA, was a 19th-century lilacand-white lace-trimmed broderie-anglaise gown, with a beaded and sequined Alencon lace collar. I was told that it had 'a sensual bounce to the train'. The dress and the Nike 'air-heels' did not quite match, but, as she said, 'This ain't the goddarn Ritz, yer know.'

The two busiest places in the hall were the bar and the men's washroom, probably in that order.

The same music was being played over and over again, despite several offers to play requests: 'We have over 2,000 songs in our computer, so come up, folks, and write down your requests. Don't be afraid. You can't stump us.' The best man told me that although, yes, there were over 2,000 in the computer, 'trouble is, the little turd can't find 'ern.'

Food appeared — mountains of it, presented on trestle-tables covering the centre of the dance area. There was everything a Western counnyman could think of: roast beef, beef ribs, pork ribs, roast pork, roast turkey, roast chicken and ham; meat pie, fish pie, chicken pie, steak-and-kidney pie; potatoes — roast, boiled, mashed, cheesy and Romanov; a dozen different salads; bread from Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Ukraine and Sweden. There was enough food to feed the 5,000 with lots left over.

After the food came the speeches. These were mercifully short, not too drunken and somewhat suggestive. They all contained intimate advice for the bride and groom on their wedding night. This seemed a little strange, as the couple was well-known to all the speakers and had been living together for more than a year before the wedding. I asked the best man whether it was assumed that the couple had been celibate. `Jeez, no,' said the best man. 'If they'd been livin' celebratin', as yore sayin', there'd be no weddin' cuz we'd thunk it strange like.'

As the man with the music searched for different songs, following angry protests from the dancers, the bridegroom's tall sister, who looked like a stick insect, grabbed the microphone. She announced that she wanted to sing a song that she had composed in memory of her dead brother — the one who had hanged himself. I suggested to my wife that it was time to leave. We went out into the starry, prairie winter night and drove home.

The next morning we heard that there had been a break-in at the village community hall and that all the wedding presents had been stolen.

Two weeks after the wedding, we visited the happy couple and were met by a torrent of unbridelike language as the new wife railed against the wraithlike photographer. 'None of the feckin' pictures turned out,' she said. 'So we have no record or memory of the friggin' weddin',' Thank god for this small but most infinite of mercies.