These Wedding Brawl Arrests Prove Edmonton Is a City for Lovers

Every now and then you see something that melts the cold, unfeeling shell adulthood forces upon you; something that reminds you that true love is a very real and magical thing.

Sometimes it's an elderly couple holding hands while out on an evening stroll, a living testament that the heart can not only endure but flourish across the many peaks and valleys of life. Sometimes it's a young, smiling family playing in the park that offers a fleeting glimpse into the promise of domestic bliss. Sometimes it's your extremely patient wife taking your drunk ass through a McDonald's drive-thru after picking you up from a greasy late-night poker game with the boys.

But there is no greater emblem of the human heart's boundless grace than the sight of newlywed lovers getting arrested together after allegedly starting a drunken brawl at an Edmonton bar on their wedding night.

The precise origins of this scrap are a mystery, but anyone who has even spent time in downtown Edmonton on a Saturday night already has a more intimate understanding of this situation than I could ever hope to explain. A heavily polluted bridal party staggers into the barcade at Denizen Hall after a long day of celebrating a couple's expression of undying love. They get a couple more drinks in them and then some shit goes down. Someone gets the stink eye from a stranger, or another patron's getting too close for comfort, and then it's all just a big blurry clusterfuck, people flinging bows and falling all over each other and a bride in a goddamn wedding gown is just whaling on the bouncers trying to drag her man away.

Weddings are a Whole Thing even when they go off without a hitch, but here is a Bridezilla going Super Saiyan on the cops as the whole entourage spills back out the doors onto the street.

Meanwhile, the crowd in the bar is going wild, stepping back from the pinball machines and arcade arcana to press up against the glass to gawk at the matrimonial melee. This is bigger than the Oilers in Round 2, more epic than an Eskimos endrun; this is a glimmer of the face of God. A bride and groom fighting the cops together is the deepest moment of love the human species can express. The couple that Ride or Dies together stays and slays together.

City council can stop throwing money at consultants in the search of a new slogan; this world-historical river city romance has all your bases covered. Truly, madly, deeply, Edmonton is a city for lovers. Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.