"Here comes the bride!"

And there she was. This was the moment I had been waiting for ever since I'd mustered up the courage to pop the question and had subsequently been flabberghasted that she'd actually said yes. But now that the moment was actually here, I actually felt weak in the knees. Ever since that "Yes!", I had felt invincible, like nothing in the world could stop me. Now, however, I suddenly began worrying that all this was too good to be true, that I was deluding myself, that somehow everyone had colluded to play a giant prank on me and I was the only one who wasn't aware. Or maybe it was all just a dream? Basically, I couldn't believe that I had ever managed to get someone as beautiful as the woman in white now walking down the aisle towards me to ever love me.

As she drew closer, the feeling of dread grew. Why was she so immaculate? Why was she so clean? There was not a spot on her, not a single fleck of semen, not a hair out of place -- at least, as far as I could tell, since her head was hidden under a shroud. A fucking shroud?? What was this, the sixteenth century? Who wears a shroud to a wedding? And why was no-one getting up to use her? Why was she allowed to walk towards the altar completely unspoiled? It wasn't respect for the sanctity of marriage -- there was fucking going on in the audience and the minister himself had only just finished ejaculating on one of the bridesmaids -- so could it be respect for the bride? But that usually didn't stop anyone, either. Heck, I myself had been one of the first to run up to Rebecca and bend her over when she was walking down the aisle on her wedding. So why was no-one getting up? And what the fuck was up with that shroud?

I was beginning to get paranoid. What if my bride-to-be had gotten cold feet at last minute and done a runner? What if this shrouded person running towards me was some sort of stunt-bride, a substitute, a practical joke that everyone was in on? I glanced over to Brock and Josh, my best men, and immediately regretted that decision since they did nothing to alleviate my fears. They seemed on edge, anxious even. They were watching the proceedings intently, keeping a keen eye on me, the audience, and whoever that was walking down the aisle. They even seemed to be muttering to one another out of the corners of their mouths. What was going on? I, of course, hadn't been allowed to see the bride before the wedding, but I knew they'd been in to see her. I figured that they, at the least, would have seized that opportunity to use her when she had just put on her wedding dress. It's not every day you get to use a freshly showered, exquisitely dressed bride, after all. This all felt very wrong.

Her walk down the aisle seemed to be taking ages. Granted, this could just be because her father, who was escorting her, wasn't the fastest anymore, but still. It just gave me more time to develop an honest-to-god anxiety attack.

In order to calm myself, I started breathing deeply and slowly and thought back to how I first met her. After all, we had had the most amazing love story, and that had to count for something, right?