The Stars and the Cookie Jar

I enjoyed my Luddite week and a half away from the internet, I'm surprised to say. But now that the honeymoon is almost over (in the purely calendar sense) I wanted to note my thoughts on the wedding.

Big secret: I don't remember a lot of my wedding.

I mean, I do,

I worked a regular day last Thursday, finishing up various projects, while N and lunamystic ran around. I got in the car with N after work and beheld our cakes on the back seat, nude of protective packaging of any kind. All that naked, exposed buttercream was really frightening. It damaged my calm. I'm gonna kill the baker. I'm not sure how we got up to Pennsylvania without a major pasty disaster, but that's all I remember of the drive. I also remember the hotel room we landed in, which was just wrong -- a smoking room when we had requested, confirmed and re-confirmed a non-smoking room. We had a meltdown that first night, and the next day we went to Target and bought two kinds of deodorising bleach and our own bath linens.

The Target had a little escalator just for your loaded cart. It's the little things.

And I know Friday and Saturday happened, is the thing. I know we had people arriving and running errands. I know we enjoyed people's company! So many people were there helping us, our attendants and friends and extended family. Saturday our florist completely fell through on us. Don't worry, we hadn't paid for a petal.

Without chaos_pockets, we wouldn't have had flowers. She did an amazing job, including a beautiful work of intertwined red ribbon, white ribbon and roses around a picture frame that meant a great deal to N and me.

Saturday night, N's uncle cooked dinner for N's family, my grandparents, uncle and cousin... and about sixty people who never showed, if you go by the amount of food left over. It was a brilliant dinner, and N's mom made this DVD that just, it was so moving and sappy and no one in my family would ever have done something like that to show their support for me. I really like the family I've married into. My grandparents liked everyone they met, too.

And then it was Sunday!
We went to breakfast with the Rainette family, loaded everything up into the Flexcar, scrabbled around for the papers that had our vows and our texts on them, and got everything and everyone over to the church.

[Around noon on Sunday, between breakfast and the church, we received word that my mother would not, in fact, be coming to the wedding. Because she just can't show up for anything that's important to me. Her head would explode and all the little aliens would spill out and... am I digressing?]

So my mother wasn't there. But most of my family was, really. And N's family was there for me.

The ceremony was a beautiful, happy blank. I have this image of all my friends smiling at me as we started to walk in, and I know I thought wow! That's a lot of people. Oh dear, they're taking photographs. Our processional was Bach, Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, and there was a pipe organ and everything. la_rainette read Ruth 1: 16-17, kraada read a blessing along with members of N's family, and there was singing. It was a beautiful, perfect ceremony and I wish I could recall more of it. Um, and nobody shouted 'Mazel tov' when N broke the glass under her heel, but they may have been cowed by the sheer beauty of the surroundings. N almost cried when we said our vows. And then we walked back down the aisle together, and everyone was hugging and kissing us and there were people I didn't know and people I hadn't seen in forever and people treading on my dress! Or maybe that was me treading on my dress.

Our ceremony was honestly perfect -- like, everything happened the way it was supposed to happen, and wonderfully, and in good time. My wife was so beautiful in her dress. I managed not to look like an eclair in mine. And nobody tripped or dropped anything or made a scandal. It was everything we could have hoped.



If anyone knows what song was played for our recessional from the church, please tell me! No one can remember. It may well have been 'Jesus Christ is Ris'n Today'! But I don't know! Because we can't remember!1!111!!

STAY TUNED for The Reception, In Which Selkie's Family Behaves To Their Usual Standard! And The Honeymoon, In Which Selkie Gets Stung By A Bee!