JP Nadeau was determined not to let anything get in the way of his daughter’s wedding – not even a lightning bolt that surged through his hand partway through his toast to the newlyweds.

The Canadian couple had just been married an hour earlier at an outdoor ceremony in his family’s apple orchard in Woodstock, New Brunswick, on Saturday. A few clouds had started to roll in on the hot, sunny day as the father of the bride took the microphone to make his speech.

“I said: ‘Adam, you are some lucky guy,’” Nadeau told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “As soon as I said that, my daughter’s eyes – she was looking at me – just popped right out. Because all of a sudden there was this lightning flash that hit right behind me.”

Nadeau looked down just in time to see his right hand light up. “It was like I was holding a lightning bolt in my hand, it was amazing,” he said. “I’m sure I jumped, because I felt a major shock. But after that I was kind of okay and I even continued speaking.”

The father of the bride, JP Nadeau, the moment lightning struck at his daughter’s wedding. Photograph: Sabrina Guitford Monteith

His speech was again interrupted – this time by the people in the sound booth who were frantically yelling at him to bring back the microphone he was holding.

He calmly walked over to the sound booth to hand them the microphone as the wedding guests looked on, stunned. “They thought I was going to drop dead.”

An avid piano player, Nadeau checked his hands for any signs of damage. When nothing turned up, the wedding continued.

Along with the lightning had come sheets of rain, forcing guests to huddle under a large tent that had been set up. “We just stayed there and partied in there until it stopped raining,” he said. “It was really good. It was really a fun thing.”

Days later, he had yet to visit a doctor. But he brushed off any concerns about his health. “I’m okay, there’s really nothing at all.”

The lightning strike had felt like sudden shock that ran through him, he said, leaving just a scorch mark on his thumb where the electricity had likely entered his body.

“A lot of lesser men would have perished. But I don’t know how it happened that I could just walk, scot-free,” he said. Laughing, he added that the jolt might have even helped his health. “I was saying to someone I think my knee is working: better.”