Preventing Grace
Karen and Joe (much discussion was had about what they preferred to be called, how to pronounce their last name, what would happen if you joined their two names together, a worthy and very interesting conversation from the night before) sensibly got married at 11:30 on Saturday morning. The timing of a wedding makes all the difference. Too late and everyone is tired before it starts. Too early and nobody is awake. 11:30 was perfect. It gave me time to fancy up all the children, pony tail the little girls, lather my self with eye liner to make me feel really awake, and jump the car.
Jump the car, you say, Yes. Every now and then our nice new van decides not to start, especially when children climb into it before going to bed to find the cord for their stupid cheep tablet and either turn on a light or neglect to shut the door all the way. Slipped back across the small sea of ice in my heels after discovering it to be dead dead dead, swearing softly, and found a pair of boots and my capable aunt who pulled up next to me and joined me in the colossal struggle of jumping a car from a rental car that never wants you to try and do what we were doing. But, ha ha! We showed em! We arrived three minutes early to the wedding.
A wide open light filled church, beautiful, honey colored, peaceful, with a long back row into which all my children were settled with beautiful little bags of pencils, crayons and paper and stickers. Alouicious and Romulus put their heads down to draw and tried never to look up again lest they catch a glimpse of the bride or any “disgusting kissing”. Marigold and Elinor applied stickers to everything and twirled round and round and round, though basically in quiet. Elphine and Gladys kept their eyes peeled wide so as not to miss anything. Wendy passed her babies around and danced around in the back with them. On the whole, I felt that we couldn’t be missed. A long row of children and babies. The long looks of people counting under their breath, “one..two, three, four…five…six…seven, eight!”
Karen and Joe are most remarkably and sensibly Anglican. Their priest stood up, in solemnity and quiet, and went on with the prayer book, and the readings, and the sermon, as if it was the most normal and ordinary thing in the world. Well, it is normal and ordinary for me, but one doesn’t expect one’s relatives to fling all caution to the wind and join up with some part of the ACNA, to have a pastor come from Church of the Resurrection, to take a chalice each of them and stand distributing it to the congregation like they know what they are doing. It was so beautiful! Even if you are in no way Anglican, if you are ever thinking about getting married, you ought to consider the prayer book. It’s cadence, gravity, beauty. I could go on and on. Whispered to Alouicious and Romulus, who couldn’t care less, that they needed to pay attention because this was real church and it was counting for Sunday. “So sit up” I said, “and listen to the sermon”.
When once asked by a friend what I thought made a wedding really beautiful, I said, or should have said, that it is the quality of the belief of the two people getting married. If you have a big fancy time with a hundred thousand dollars worth of flowers, and no belief, it might be pretty to look at but it’s not going to be sustainingly beautiful. If, on the other hand, you have two people who so love Jesus they stand looking at each other and then out at the world with real light, with real joy, well then the beauty is quite overwhelming. I put Karen and Joe in the second group. Everything about the service revealed grounded true faith and love for Jesus. I was weepingly encouraged. All is not lost, I thought to myself.
Plus they were just so pretty to look at. Well, Karen was gorgeous. Joe looked very put together and handsome. Alouicious would be so annoyed with me if I said the groom, or any other man, looked pretty. Obviously I’m talking about all the ladies. Where was I?
Oh yes! The party! Very sensibly, again–I so appreciate it when people are sensible and clever and do interesting things like be Christian and have their weddings in church– and in this case have the reception right there in the church so that I didn’t have to pack up the vast throng and take them whining and moaning to some other place. They were all settled at a long table with lots of nice other children and a huge vat of chips and drinks and I didn’t have to talk to any of them again until the little girls wanted to dance. This, I assure you,
is true familial love. The bride is one of five siblings and her parents, my aunt and uncle, just know that what one wants so much is not to sit with one’s own small children at a wedding. (Elphine is addicted to using the word ‘one’ and I’m afraid it’s beginning to affect me, I mean one.) The other true stroke of brilliance was having thirteen kinds of pie, instead of cake. There was so so so much pie.
Peach, Elspeth ate all the peaches out before I could get a picture.
Key Lime, balanced precariously on a cup because of needing more room for all the kinds of pie.
Blueberry. Gorgeous, blue, rich.
Chocolate. This is not a picture of the true chocolate silk of our grandmother because it disappeared too quickly to acquire a picture. Did lick some of it off someone else’s plate, though.
There was also Apple and some other kinds, but I had to stop the children from just taking pie, eating three bites, and leaving it in front to me. Worried that I wouldn’t be able to walk out on my own two feet. Fortunately Mariogld wanted to dance and then so did Elspeth. Well, not fortunately because I’m terrible at it. But it was a wedding, so I stood out there virtuously and alone twirling the little girls until they lost interest and then I fled.
And then finally Joe and Karen ran off to catch a plane to somewhere warm, which, I think, must be the true reason for getting married in a cold cold lent.
Isn’t my photography extraordinary. Did a truly terrible job taking pictures the entire weekend.
Part Four: The After Party
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