The Shark We Didn't Know Was There

When you get married in an aquarium, you make certain choices with full awareness of what you're doing. You know the ceremony will be in front of a twelve-by-thirty-six-foot tank. You know there will be fish. You know there will probably be a shark in there somewhere, because it's the aquarium at the Point Defiance Zoo and that's just part of the deal.

We even leaned into it. Our cake topper was a bride and groom in a rowboat with a shark attacking from below. We commissioned it specifically because we thought it was funny. It was funnier in person - a two-tiered cake with shells and starfish cascading down the sides, topped with us about to meet our maritime doom. When they unveiled it at the reception, the whole room laughed. We laughed. It was exactly the kind of weird that felt right for us.

What we did not plan, and what nobody mentioned, and what the photographer apparently decided to simply let happen, was the shark that showed up in our wedding photos.

There he is.

I found it about halfway through the gallery, scrolling through on the computer weeks after the wedding. We'd been through hundreds of photos by that point - the ceremony, the vows, the box, the kookaburra (yes, there was a kookaburra at our wedding reception, and yes, she laughed at me, and no, I'm not going to bury that detail) - and then I stopped scrolling.

I started laughing. Not a polite laugh. A real one.

"Come look at this" I said to my husband.

He leaned in. There was a pause - that specific pause that means he's processing something he finds genuinely funny but is going to be quiet about it - and then he started laughing too. Neither of us could stop for a while.

The shark is enormous. He's dead center in the frame, cruising along behind our heads with the unhurried confidence of a creature who has absolutely nowhere else to be. We are kissing. He is gliding. Nobody in the room noticed. The photographer didn't say a word - not that day, not in any note with the gallery, not ever. He either didn't see it or decided it was better as a surprise. Either way, correct call.

Here's the part that made it even better: once we went back and looked, we realized the shark hadn't just shown up for the kiss.

He was there during the vows too.

There's a full shot of the ceremony - Annemarie officiating, Seth and me facing each other, my maid of honor standing to the side - and passing through the tank directly behind Annemarie's head, as if presiding over the whole thing, is a shark. Bigger than the one in the kiss photo. Moving through the frame with complete indifference to the commitment being made in front of him.

He was there the whole time. We just didn't know it.

We printed the first kiss shark photo. It made it to the mantle, alongside the stairs photo from before the ceremony and our end of the night photo. Those are the three.

I've thought about what I would have done if someone had pointed it out in the moment. Probably nothing differently, honestly. We'd already put sharks on the cake. The shark tank was the whole reason we chose the venue. We just didn't expect him to show up quite so... personally.

Somewhere in the South Pacific Aquarium at Point Defiance Zoo, there is a shark who attended our wedding and has never once mentioned it. We respect the discretion. We've been happily married ever since.