Two Weddings and a Mass Service: The story of 6hrs singing marathon on October 25

The first time when our choir coordinator asked my opinion about receiving both or choose only one of two wedding assignments for October 25, I didn't hesitated at all. I said to accept both assignments. Why?

Firstly, there was enough time between two assignments, although the place where each wedding was held was different, but the distance also not so far

Another reason, in each wedding, our choir have a close connection in the past. In one couple, the bride was one of ours once. In the other, it's the sister of the groom who was our member. 

The trouble was, at the same day, our choir also had a routine service for Sunday afternoon Mass. But, still I thought our choir could handle it. There's barely any difficult new songs, either for the two weddings or the Mass. As a songs coordinator, I could choose and arrange so the songs were quite simple and not too many for the three functions altogether. So, it would be no big deal at all, except that it would need a big amount of practices and commitment.

When it was finally presented to all of choir members, there was no strong opposition. Yes, there was quite a big shock and unbelief, but they accepted it...I think....hehehe...! So, the tight practices schedule was arranged and conducted. At the beginning of our intensive rehearsal, I heard some cynical opinion about our audacity in taking such many tasks in one day, that we should take a closer look about the choir's capability before accepted those events. Still, when a friend asked me about that, I remained in my opinion: we could handle it, maybe not easily, but certainly it was within our reach. That we only needed a discipline and a big teamwork. So, our practices went on as scheduled......until two weeks before our big time.....

It was the time to confirm everything, the organ player(s), the time schedule...everything. The first big shock was that the first wedding ceremony was in fact an hour later than our received schedule. It provided us less time to move to the other church and perform our next assignment. Then came the next worry....turned out we only had one musician for the three events, instead of ideally two persons. It meant we had to time everything carefully, so our only one musician had enough time to be ready mentally and physically from first event to the second one. But, what can we do.....we had said yes! So, there was nothing else to do than forward....!

So, our big dreaded time, the October 25, was coming. It was started with quite a bang at 12 o'clock, as the song-books carrier came way too late than the time we'd agreed on and made our Conductor in a bad mood. Thank God, we the singers was quite offhanded about that...hehehe...we just did our best as far as we could. And more luck on us, the first wedding ceremony was quick enough..... At 01.30pm, we had been on the way to the next assignment, 10 minutes from the first church. The traffic was quite smooth, so we also had a time for a quick lunch and a short re-warming-up. Precisely at 2pm, our second wedding ceremony began. And it went on for an hour. By which time, several of us had felt so hot and thirsty, that all we thought was how refreshing is Es Teler...hahaha... So, after the ceremony was over, several of us decided to spend the remaining time enjoying the cold Indonesian drink at a close-by mall, then hurried back to the first church and got ready to perform the routine task for the afternoon Sunday Mass. And there we went...sang again....started on 5pm till 6.30pm. After the closing song finished, we applauded ourselves...hurray, finally we did it!!!

When I think about that day, I am really proud of my choir. Although we all were so tired and weary, we still could sing with all of our heart. The best moment for me is when we sang the Ave Maria by Giulio Caccini. We had sung this song several times in wedding ceremonies, but it was the first time we performed it for a Sunday Mass. For me, the performance that day was the best compared to the other times we sang it. I guess we were so tired, that we just followed every direction from our Conductor, no question, no objection....hahaha.... Furthermore, my personal ambition was 100% fulfilled that day.....the choir had performed the Ave Maria by Giulio Caccini, before the other choirs did the same and we did it very well, too....hahaha... It would be very difficult to get over us....hahaha....very confidence of me, aren't I? hahaha...