Question:
It kills me when things go wrong at gigs, especially after months of preparing and trying to foresee all possible problems. In this case it was the wedding of a good friend who entrusted me with arranging all the music.
In the middle of the ceremony, the bride's 10-year old niece was going to sing a song. She lived far away so I only got to meet with her the day before, though I had emailed some MP3s of my guitar part for her to practice with.
During the ceremony I noticed that the reader right before her had partially disconnected the mic cable when she returned it to the stand. I quickly went up and snapped it back in. But after I turned around, the little girl apparently grasped the microphone near the bottom to adjust the angle, and she accidentally squeezed the connector button again, enough to break the signal.
I didn't notice this part -- it was only described to me after the ceremony by the bass player, who figured it out too late. I did notice that her voice didn't come through the speaker when she started to sing, but I thought that the mic cable had randomly failed (despite working perfectly in all our rehearsals before that). All we could do at this point was play as quietly as possible and hope that some people could hear her. As it turned out, almost no one could hear her.
I still feel really bad about how that turned out, even though other musical parts in the wedding went quite well. She had been working so hard on the song, including a tricky bridge section and key change at the end (not to mention overcoming nerves). She didn't even seem to notice that the mic wasn't working -- she was so focused on the song.
I suppose I could have used a mic + cable combo with a more secure connection. Maybe I could have interrupted her when I noticed the sound wasn't working, but that would have been awkward too. I wasn't even sure I could fix it. No one said anything to me about it, but I wouldn't be surprised if people in the audience held me responsible for spoiling that segment, since everyone knew I was responsible for the whole music setup. That's fine, I don't mind taking the blame. I just wish it had worked.
Well I have another wedding and a graduation coming up. I'm sure more surprises await me.

Answer:
Bummer! Try not to "Monday morning quarterback" yourself too much. If you had known at the time you would have fixed it.

Answer:
Try not to be too hard on yourself over it.
Besides, 50% of all marriages end up in divorce.......
(just kidding - ;)).

Answer:
Life happens! I feel for the niece though.

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