I used to play piano for a lot of weddings, and I made it a rule that I did not attend rehearsals.  Typically a musician would not have a lot to do at the rehearsal and would be more in the way than anything else.  However, this was not the case with the wedding I'm singing for this weekend!

First, the members of the schola needed to gather last night for the first time to run through the music.  It was an interesting little group consisting of the priest leading it (Fr. Redfern) who is a self-taught expert in Gregorian Chant.  Then there was a fellow who is in a male schola of three singing at Masses run by the Institute of Christ the King down here in South-Eastern Wisconsin.  Then there was a sister of the groom who doesn't read music, doesn't know how to pronounce Latin, and never sang chant before (at least not that she remembered - when she was little she was in a children's choir that I led).  And finally there was a young woman who occasionally sings with my schola, and myself.  Tomorrow we will be joined by a man who works for our diocese and is actually one of my former theology professors, and another former seminarian who used to be in my youth group (but has since become to be more a friend of the family). 

After an hour of hanging out in the sacristry learning and rehearsing all the propers and ordinary (while the wedding party went through their paces), we then were called up to the choir loft to go through a dry run of the whole wedding, including singing parts of the introit and communion and the entirety of the ordinary chants and responses.  It was the most involved wedding rehearsal I've ever been to.  By the end when I got a chance to practice my solo my voice was completely shot.  So here's hoping it's back this morning for the wedding!

I am still planning to record the music, so hopefully we'll get sound files online afterwards.