Wedding

Our wedding was beautiful! Friends, family, children; good food, well behaved relatives, overly warm Great Hall/short ceremony; people brought not only delicious but beautiful dishes to the potluck reception. It rained at the end, which is good luck.

Snapshots:

• The kids twirled and ribbon danced while Greg plays wonderful music for the prelude
• My dad and mom are walking me down the aisle, and dad leans over and whispers in a stage whisper "HUSKVARNA" (which I'd recently confessed to him was my new favorite word)
  
• I get to the end of the aisle and there were some of my favorite girls in the world dancing and jumping wth excitement. Lillian and Abby were delightful. I looked over my shoulder and saw Sam and Grace. I missed Gwen and Sue and Kim, but Gwen was in the hospital and her moms needed to be with her.
  
• I get to the front of the church and there was the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.
• Tom lit the chalice and read with great fabulousness
  
• Our 4 year old granddaughter Cami gave us the flowers, then spied the feather duster she'd hidden earlier, and dusted the pulpit while the ring bearers, Jacob and Sopira showed us rings and our families lit candles we placed on the altar cloth Adele weaved for us..
• Beloved suggested to her that she might come and hold our flowers for us, and that got her off the dais.
  
• Rachel read an excerpt from the Riverhouse Stories

[She loved her] and loved loving her. Out past the edges of the world's agreement, beyond even her own standards, her own approval, the rules of her childhood, beyond even her own mind, she loved her and loved loving her. The loving brought forth in her all of her courage as well as all of her limitations, all of her blind desire to be lie the others, to melt in, to be invisible. It took her out of the roles she thought she would grow up to fill. It took her away from her automatic stream of pictures of what life should be and forced her to create her own version of what life could be. and beyond all of that was the woman she loved, living a life made from nothing more than her own imagination, and she was beautiful.

• My incredibly handsome sibling family, my brother and his wife and Naomi, read from Anne Morrow Lindberg

Here the bonds of marriage are formed. For marriage, which is always spoken of as a bond, becomes actually, in this stage, many bonds, many strands, of different texture and strength, making up a web that is taut and firm. The web is fashioned of love. Yes, but many kinds of love: romantic love first, then a slow-growing devotion and, playing through these, a constantly rippling companionship. It is made of loyalties, and interdependencies, and shared experiences. It is woven of memories of meetings and conflicts; of triumphs and disappointments. It is a web of communication, a common language, and the acceptance of lack of language too.... It is a web of instincts and intuitions, and known and unknown exchanges. The web of marriage is made by propinquity, in the day to day living side by side, looking outward and working outward in the same direction. It is woven in space and in time of the substance of life itself.

• We surprise each other with vows and that was nice, but neither of us now remembers what we heard. We're looking for the text papers which we know are somewhere...
  
  
• I was petrified I'd cry, as I really only have two settings-- on and off-- and on is whole-face screwed up like that old Life Magazine picture of that craggly old man with the super flexible face. (If anyone can find it on line, I'd love to link to it) A single tear escaped while I was listening to Beck's vows, but no one knows it was only because the sweat got in my eye.
• The minister shared his pulpit so that Karen, who we'd asked 5 years ago if she'd officiate when we got around to a commitment ceremony, could get a one day license to wed us in legally married broohaha. Karen did an incredible job of officiating, focusing us, leading with dignity and grace, and cooregraphing everything.
• The children, young and grown-up alike, were all beautiful.Beloved 's children, Eric and Micaela were so incredibly involved and supportive and present it was beautiful to see.
  
• The reception site setter uppers were amazing, getting so much done and making a simple picnic site so beautiful
• My brother and god-son and I'm not sure who else decorated our car w/ a big florescent orange Just Married sign and soda and coffee cans and Boosts tied on to make noise.
  
• Beloved hates parties and large groups of people doing extroverted things. She'd been telling me for two months, "Don't leave my side," "Stay with me." Well, come the day, she was a butterfly. I saw her four times. Total. Once at the actual ceremony. Once when it was time to cut the cake, once when her sister made a toast, and once I actually bumped into her.
• The kids had fun and played played played
  
• All of our relatives but one section of my biological family attended our wedding.
  
• Beloved's conservative fundamental brother came (I love my sister very much) and helped bar-b-que
• My conservative uncle didn't, which was best for all involved (my dad sadly jokes that my uncle writes for Rush Limbaugh)
  
• I had a great moment of joy and beauty to introduce my grandchildren (via Beloved) to my niece (via my brother) ("This is your cousin Naomi." "Hi Naomi. Hey Grandma Cindy, she looks like you!")
• Beloved and I drank ginger ale all afternoon out of champagne glasses that Michelle gave us, being as how she planned her life not around our wedding ;-)
• My old friends Sharon and Mags came from Philly and DC respectively. Mags was the friend who remained my friend when I came out at Eastern College, now Eastern University, in the mid-80's. Sharon and her partner Ava took me in when I had an ideological breakdown a couple of years later.
• We left as it started to rain harder, and after a couple of miles the orange florescent Just Married sign started to come de-attached, and safety wonk that I am, I immediately had visions of it blowing off my car, and causing a crash and so pulled into the hospital parking lot to take it off.
  
• The adult children, Beloved's cousins and sister and friend Marilyn (who acted as our wedding planner) stayed to clean up, and before they finished there was a deluge. They waited it out with the only party supplies not yet packed into the cars, the flower vases and a couple of boxes of wine. Apparently they had a good time, which they continued at our house when they unloaded the cars. It would seem that we missed a really good time.
  
• We went to a hotel and Beloved was asleep 10 minutes later.

A great time was had by all.