The Little Wedding that Grew

The daughter of a Hope ND farmer is getting a wedding she will never forget on one of the unluckiest days of the year. Jesse Ihry and her fiance Matt Linback will be married on Friday the 13th, and heralding Jesse’s walk down the aisle will be Cameron Tapp of the Australian band Borne, singing her favorite song.
Jesse had discovered Tapp’s song, “The Guide,” on iTunes well before she and Matt and made their commitment to each other. That song had been featured on the television program Friday Night Lights and on October Road. “The Guide” also was featured as a Single of the Week on iTunes and earned the band a slot at SXSW last year, marking the band’s first appearance in the States. Last year, Borne won four Music Oz awards in Australia, including Artist of the Year and Best Singer/Songwriter.

When Jesse and Matt got engaged last June, they began the process of putting their wedding ceremony together. From the beginning, they knew that the song “The Guide” was going to figure prominently in their plans. Little did they know how prominently.

Because the Lutheran church where the ceremony was to be held did not permit them to use recorded music in a wedding service, they started the search for sheet music. “We looked and looked online everywhere and could not find it,” Jesse said. “I went to the Borne website, and I just emailed everyone down the list and said, ‘I’m getting married and I really want to walk down the aisle to this song. I don’t care what we have to do. I need the sheet music.’”

But there was a problem. Cameron Tapp, the frontman for Borne and the writer of the song, didn’t have any sheet music. In fact, he didn’t know how to do musical notation. Tapp explained that in a personal email to Jesse and made a few suggestions. “He said we could have someone listen who has a really good ear and get them to play it or we could do it over the Internet and he could show them,” Jesse said. Then, he added, “You could fly me there.”

“I thought he was joking,” Jesse recalled. “Then, we realized he was serious.” That’s when Jesse and Matt decided to consolidate their student loans and give up their honeymoon to get him to Fargo.
“The thing with this song is so surreal,” Jesse said. “But it’s not gee, the singer of a band is coming, but it is the meaning behind the song and having the actual singer here. It’s like you won the lottery, but in a meaningful way, and it’s something that matters that you’ll never forget.”

And for Cameron Tapp, it is just as special. “I’m a sucker for a love story,” he said in a phone interview last week. “It’s such an honor to be asked to sing…to be asked to play a song that you’ve written at someone’s wedding is such a beautiful thing. That in itself is a wonderful thing for any artist to be asked because it means that your song has done what it was supposed to do, which was to reach people, to talk to people. That’s what music is for. It’s not for bank accounts.”

It took several weeks to finalize all of the arrangements. “We were talking back and forth over a few months,” Jess said. “We didn’t have it officialized for a long time. We prepared everything else around that song. Then we got on the phone with the airlines, and we got his tickets and his itinerary. Then it felt like it was the real deal.”

This Friday the 13th, Matt will see his bride float down the aisle of the church on her father’s arm, while Cameron Tapp sings “The Guide.” During the ceremony, Jesse’s uncle will sing a song and so will Ian Johnson from Fargo, who just was signed by a label. It will truly be a wedding that Jesse and Matt’s friends and family will long remember.

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