Man Sees Groom’s Mother at Daughter’s Wedding and Recognizes Woman from His Distant Past — Story of the Day

A supposedly faithful married man is stunned when he recognizes the mother of his daughter’s bridegroom at her wedding.

Lesley West was a single child, and she wasn’t ashamed to admit she was daddy’s little girl. Her father, Donald West, had spoiled Lesley, and the two had always been especially close.

When Lesley brought her fiancé home to meet her parents, she was delighted when David and Donald became instant best friends. She never imagined her father would try to stop her wedding at the last minute.

After college, Lesley had been offered a job in New York, far away from her parents and her home in Portland, Oregon. The nearly three-thousand-mile distance made Lesley’s trips home rare.

When Lesley announced her wedding plans five years after she and David had moved in together, her parents had tried to persuade her to hold the ceremony in Oregon, but she declined.

“David has six brothers and sisters, all married with families,” Lesley had pointed out. “Apart from gran, our family is just the three of us. It will be easier for us to fly to New York — and besides, you guys need a break!”

So the Wests had booked their flights so they would arrive early in the morning of the day before the wedding, with plenty of time to get settled in and meet David’s family at the rehearsal dinner.

But as they say, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and the result was a disaster beyond anything they could have imagined. As the Wests’ plane was taxiing for take-off, a bird flew into one of the engines, and the flight was aborted.

That meant that not only did they miss the rehearsal dinner, but the next connection they could find to New York would get them there just minutes before the wedding was scheduled to start!

Donald, his wife Kate, and his mother Diane were nervous wrecks by the time the plane landed at Kennedy. The two ladies had dressed in the cramped airplane bathroom, and done their best with hair and make-up.

As for Donald, he just brushed back his thinning hair and straightened his tie. Nothing was going to stop him from walking his little girl down the aisle. The three Wests hopped into a taxi, and Donald promised the driver a huge tip if he could get them there on time.

The taxi screeched to...