The Incredibly Emotional Moment A Children’s Choir Surprised Their Director By Singing At His Wedding

peter griffin applause GIF by Family Guy

There is a children’s choir in Massachusetts proving that hate and bigotry have absolutely ZERO place within the education system. How are they doing it, you may be wondering? Well, they showed up at their choir director’s wedding rehearsal in order to surprise him. Allow me to explain…

Christopher Landis is the beloved kid’s choir director at Hingham Middle school which is located in Massachusetts. Landis also happens, to be gay.

Landis found the one thing all of us hope to find at some point during our lifetime; true love, and he found it with his long-time partner and now-husband, Joe Michienzie. Now, Christopher absolutely tried his best to hide the nature of his relationship and engagement to Joe from his own students… but luckily for him, he completely and utterly failed to do so.

You see, those clever kiddies knew exactly who Joe was to their favorite choir director. And they wanted to do something to let would let Christopher know.

In all fairness, Joe himself knew that the kids in his then husband-to-be’s choir definitely knew more than they were letting on regarding the relationship between the pair, and this then set the stage for the incredible moment they were about to bless their choir director with.

According to an interview with The Patriot Ledger, two women named Joy Foraste and Margit Foley (who both happen to be the parents of 8th-grade girls within the choir) actually sought out Landis’s then-fiance Joe in order to get his stamp of approval for the kids’ special surprise.

“We reached out to his fiance Joe because I wasn’t really sure how he’d react, but he was immediately on board. He said he had also been trying to figure out how to incorporate the students because they mean so much to Mr. Landis.”

Obviously, everyone who was involved wanted to send an incredibly important message to their awesome director; All You Need Is Love!

Of course, getting that message across while also having to keep it firmly under wraps up until the wedding rehearsal happened was certainly no small feat, either.

Once Foraste and Foley approached Joe they began getting their plans underway almost immediately. Of course, they still had to acquire the permission of the parents of each and every student who was involved in the surprise, of which they were hoping to have at least 20 kids.

In order to get a proper headcount on parents who did want their kids to be a voice to this glorious message, Foley explains that they shot out an e-mail to 60 parents in the hope of getting at least their 20 required singers.. however, they were absolutely blown away at the overwhelming amount of positive responses from all the parents who knew Landis as a teacher.

“We had no idea what to expect, but instead of the 20 we were hoping for, we had over 50 kids. It’s such a testament to Mr. Landis as a teacher and as a figure in their lives.”

Obviously, with those kinds of crazy numbers, there was no doubt that this pop-up performance was going to be the surprise of a LIFETIME.

(Source: Facebook Screenshot/Hingham Public Schools)

In order to prepare for the big day, so to speak, the 50 something kids within the choir worked extra hard at making sure they not only completely nailed the famous Beatles song (All You Need Is Love, obviously) but also kept it a secret from Mr. Landis the ENTIRE time.

Of course, organizing such a large choir to deliver a truly beautiful performance in such a brief amount of time certainly takes a lot of work but the kids took it in their stride like the absolute champions they are, by setting aside time out of their very busy weekend schedules in order to meet up for practice.

To help to keep things on the down-low they met up with Dona Naher, who happens to be another accomplished chorus teacher in Norwell whose kids can very frequently be found in Ladis’s class as well.

Beginning just one week before Thanksgiving, the kids began their meet-ups with Naher so that they could practice the song at Norwell’s James Library every single Sunday up until D-Day, which happened on the 21st December 2018.

Coming from a school which prides itself on teaching children the power of kindness, positivity, and pursuing personal growth (which, these days, should definitely not be taken for granted), it’s absolutely no surprise that the kids who joined in with the surprise performance for Mr. Landis were mre than happy to let their choir director know just how much he means to them and their community.

Landis’s wedding rehearsal brunch was set to be held in Plymouth on December 21st, which is over 30 miles away from Higham Middle School, but there was no way they were going to let that stop them from getting their message to him!

Instead, all 50 of those precious kids were scheduled for an early release so that they could board a school bus – driven by one of the parents – to head out for the rehearsal.

With Christopher and Joe’s wedding rehearsal well underway by this point, as the kids started filing into the room one-by-one you can clearly see the look of total confusion on Landis’s face

With Christopher and Joe’s wedding rehearsal well underway, as the kids start filing into the room one-by-one you can see the look of confusion on Landis’s face.

As he begins to recognize that the kids who are flooding into the room during his rehearsal brunch are in fact his very own choir students, he immediately gets choked up as he suddenly realizes what’s about to happen.

Landis, very visibly fighting back those tears as the choir burst into the first verses of the legendary song, was definitely receiving his message.

According to Foraste, the special moment was emotionally charged not only for Christopher and Joe, but for all those kids as well.

“It was so wonderful for the kids to see him with his family and his close friends, and they saw him as a person, not just their teacher. They saw how much it meant to him. He immediately started crying and the kids started crying. It’s something they’ll never forget.”

Luckily for us, the entire performance was filmed and of course, the video itself was uploaded by the Higham Public Schools to their own Facebook page, which it very quickly went viral, for very obvious reasons.

No I’m not crying, I just have very severe allergies right now…

And from the look on dear Christopher Landis’ face throughout the entire heartwarming performance in the video which you can see below, you can see just how much it really, truly meant to him to be able to get to share such a beautiful, wonderful and significant moment in his life with all the children he teaches.

In fact, at the end of the video, you can even hear Landis proclaim “These are my kids!” (which, by the way, absolutely KILLED ME.) with a deep, deep sense of pride in his voice.

Now, with over one million views on Facebook alone at the time of writing this piece, there is absolutely NO question that the Hingham Middle School Spectral Chorus (as if their professional, full title) successfully got their message across to their beloved choir director 100%, and he could not be happier that they did!

But don’t take my word for it, watch the video and see for yourself!