A New Brunswick father didn’t mean to steal his daughter’s thunder on her wedding day, but that’s exactly what happened when he was struck by lightning in the middle of his speech to the bride and groom.
JP Nadeau of Woodstock, N.B., recalls last weekend’s heat was starting to make the guests uncomfortable in their formal clothes when the groom’s father handed him the microphone.
He only got a few words into his remarks, telling the groom how lucky he was to be marrying his daughter, when he said he felt a powerful surge accompanied by a loud crack.
“I said, ‘You know Adam, you are one lucky guy.’ And just with ‘lucky guy,’ all of a sudden there was this bam,” he told CTV News Channel from Woodstock, N.B.
“The electricity went through the wire, because I was holding a microphone. I saw lightning in my hand. I was really freaked out.”
The guests assembled in Nadeau’s backyard orchard were shocked as well. His wife, Maggy Thomas, describes seeing a “fiery flash” in the spot where her husband was standing. Nadeau said he was shook up, but otherwise uninjured.
They said the bolt was quickly accompanied by a massive downpour that sent everyone running for shelter.
“Somebody should have built an Ark,” Nadeau said.
Upon realizing he survived, his thoughts immediately turned to the hand he was using to grip the microphone.
“I felt the current go right through me, but it was my hand I was worried about, because I’m a piano man. I want to keep playing. I don’t care if I die. I want to keep playing,” he said.
The rest of the wedding went smoothly, according the couple.
“After that, people were coming around wondering why I was still alive,” Nadeau joked.
