Eighteen Weddings, Never Your Groom

At our eighteenth wedding, Shen Mo called off the ceremony again because I was a beat late with my vows.

She looked at me with utter disappointment. “You know I’m a perfectionist. Why can’t you follow the wedding schedule exactly?”

“If you still can’t keep up next time, perhaps you should let your friend get married for you.”

Everyone knew my friend Ji Yan was a master of punctuality. Shen Mo used him as the standard I had to meet.

If I came downstairs one minute after him at the end of the workday, she drove off with him.

If I stepped into the restaurant half a pace behind him on Valentine’s Day, she gave him my candlelit dinner.

If I reached the airport twenty seconds after him for an anniversary trip, she refunded my ticket and took him instead.

She had even canceled our wedding seventeen times and let Ji Yan run through the ceremony in my place each time.

To make the eighteenth attempt work, I filled the hall with clocks that counted out the seconds and rehearsed on my own for more than two hundred nights.

But ten seconds before we were due to take our vows, Ji Yan jumped the cue and said, “I do.”

Shen Mo ignored me and the hundred-plus clocks chiming in unison, and canceled our wedding for the eighteenth time.

It had never been my timing that wasn’t perfect. It was the fact that I wasn’t him.

Fine. I would give her the perfection she wanted.

Shen Mo took Ji Yan’s hand again. “Watch carefully. We’ll demonstrate one more time.”

I smiled and slipped the wedding rings onto their fingers.

“No need to pretend. May you have a long and happy marriage.”