Ring-Bearing Owl Ruins Wedding After Falling Asleep

An owl managed to ruin a wedding service when he fell asleep despite the fact that he was supposed to be carrying the rings down to the couple.

Darcey, who is a barn owl, fell asleep in the roof of the church. He was meant to fly down the aisle of Holy Cross Church in Sherston, Wiltshire and then deliver the rings to Andrew Matley and Sonia Cadman.

However, when the time came for him to fly in, he simply flew straight up to the roof and then refused to delve down from the rafters, instead falling asleep. The one-year-old owl then waited in the church roof and roosted, and it took around an hour to get her down.

The Reverend Christopher Bryan, who oversaw the service, remarked that the bird look content in the roof and couldn’t even be tempted down by a snack. He added, “We tried all we could to get it down but it just wouldn’t budge.”

Mr. Bryan revealed that they did manage to get her down in the end though. He remarked, “It must have been an hour before they got a ladder to rescue it.”

Ms. Cadman had hired the owl for her wedding, which took place last weekend, as a surprise for Mr Matley, who is extremely interested in falconry.

However, the bird actually only had replica rings in his possession as, for good reason, he wasn’t trusted to carry the real wedding bands into the church. Instead, they were kept in Mr. Matley’s pocket.

Ms. Cadman noted, “The owl was meant to deliver the rings to the glove my husband-to-be was wearing. But she just flew straight past the glove and straight up into the top of the church and sat in the rafters. She shut her eyes and went to sleep.”

Ms. Cadman admitted that the entire congregation found the entire ordeal hilarious and that it didn’t ruin their wedding one iota.