T w e n t y S i d e d
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| My brother-in-law, with my new sister-in-law2. I don’t want to talk too much about them here on my blog without permission, but I hope they’ll forgive me for revealing that they’re great people. Too bad they live 1,000 miles away. I love having great people around, but he works in the aerospace industry and we launch surprisingly few space shuttles here in Pennsylvania. |
Smashing wedding this weekend. Well, it was for those who got smashed, which was a very small minority. Which is good, because everyone had such fun and it would be a shame if nobody remembered it. It was an outdoor wedding, and it’s always a gamble to place that much of your wedding day in the capricious hands of mother nature. In this case it paid off. The weather was clear for the ceremony, which was full of weeping women and beaming men in equal measure, up to and including the bride and groom themselves. They said their vows with conviction, which is always encouraging. I mean, they’re vows. It’s always odd to hear adults pledge these mumbling oaths in the voice of a second grader trying to ramble their way through, “Pedge amegense to the flag”. None of that sissy crap here. These two were getting married, and they didn’t mind telling the folks in the back. Even if they knew already.
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| Left: My budding programmer. Right: Me. The tie (because I know people will ask) is Animaniacs. The pocket watch was a gift from the groom at the previous wedding. It’s stamped with a personal message and the date: September 22. I always love pointing out I’ve got a watch with Bilbo’s birthday on it. (Well, Frodo’s too, but of course everyone just calls it Bilbo’s birthday.) |
As soon as the ceremony ended the weather changed gears. Dark clouds rolled in and began raining on us with big splatty droplets that reached underneath umbrellas and awnings, threatening makeup and meticulously constructed hairstyles. The sun peeked out a few times during the shower, just to let us know this wasn’t going to go on all day. There wasn’t a rainbow, but that’s fine. It’s rude to upstage the bride on her big day. Moods brightened, then the weather.
If I ever find myself involved with the planning of another wedding (odds are good: I have two daughters) I will implore them to do what they did today and have the whole show at one location. It was about fifty exceptionally scenic meters from the ceremony to the pavilion where the reception was held. It wasn’t until today that I realized how asinine it is to have the two halves of the event in different locations. It’s just a lot of hassle to gather everyone up and drive someplace, and then have a cell phone drive to figure out who went home and who got lost. Today we just walked across the conservancy. Why don’t people do this more often? Members of the clergy can do their thing anywhere, and (for us theistic types) so can God. Seems daft to drag a couple hundred people into an unfamiliar church to fight with traffic, parking, and Google maps if they’re just going to have to do it all again an hour later.
As the reception began, the rain let up and left us with a lovely parting gift: Cool air. A half hour of rain was worth it to get rid of the July heat, which would have blunted our appetites and made dancing uncomfortable. It was sixty degrees, which is perfect. The sun came out, naturally.
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| There were only a half dozen kids but – due to the quantum nature of childhood – it felt like about fifty. |
I danced until my feet hurt, took a break, danced some more, and then hobbled around wondering how in the hell women do this in heels. Was shamed by this, and so danced some more. A silver-haired couple got out and reminded everyone that you never really forget how to dance, and their generation did it for years before they got around to having our parents.
The sun went down, the disco lights spun, and there was a full palette of music to suit people of all different walks of life, levels of dancing, and sobriety. Everything from Chubby Checker to Garth Brooks to Def Leppard to Sir Mixalot. You know, wedding music. The kids danced like giddy savages and ate like Hobbits. They darted in and out of the crowd, meeting each other and forging instantaneous friendships in a way that adults can only envy.
You know it’s a good wedding when the married folks sit together and run through the list of singles, deciding who needs to go next. Everyone went home happy, tired, and full. And a couple of them went home married. It was a good day all around.
