Wedding #2

The second wedding story isn’t nearly as long (I think!), but I thought I’d separate it out anyway. A couple of weeks ago my cousins’ son got married. To explain, no he’s not a kid – well, he is and always will be in my mind, but he’s really 25. Her mother and mine are sisters, but my Mom is quite a bit younger than all her siblings as she wasn’t born until after her oldest brother died from childhood illness. My Mom’s other siblings both married very young – her sister at 19 and I think her brother was 20 – and had children right away. My Mom also married fairly young, though after college, at 22 and waited sometime to have children – of which I’m her youngest. So there’s nearly a 20 year age gap between my oldest cousins and me (the youngest of our generation). The 2 oldest cousins both got married at 22 and had children in their 20s, so I’m generally much closer in age to their children than to them. But their children are still several years younger than me and I’ve always been aware of that generation gap – making the idea of one of them getting married seem scary!

Anyway when I saw my cousin, mother of the groom, walking down the aisle, I nearly cried at the look on her face – all the pride and joy coupled with the melancholy of “losing” her son. She’d told me recently that she’d been invited to a wedding when he was just a month old. She was nursing and not ready to leave him so long, so she’d only gone to the church, but she’d cried during the wedding at the thought that he’d one day get married and leave her. I related only too well as I watched her face and looked at the bride and groom (seeming so young and tiny that they could stand on their own wedding cake). Luckily, I was not held back down by the same hormones she would have been a month out or I would have bawled! I couldn’t help but think that that moment must have seemed only a moment ago to her and now here that vision was coming true. It would probably seem like only moments had passed when my own little one was growing up and going away and maybe even getting married.

The ceremony was beautiful and then we moved on to the party! My cousin was affiliated with the place where the reception was so she oversaw quite a lot of the preparations and was able to keep things going as long as they wanted (we left at midnight with things in full swing. I hear the festivities finally broke up around 3:30.). The bride (and to some extent the groom) was a vegetarian, so she’d decided to have a vegetarian (well, with fish) wedding. My favorite example of this was the “figs” in a blanket (my husband was so disappointed he’d misheard and thought hot dogs!). Overall the vegetarian option didn’t bother me (though I’m not a huge fish fan), but it clearly bothered some of the others at our table. The comments were so funny as many noted – you know, I don’t even eat meat every day, but now knowing I CAN’T have it! We were clearly seated with the carnivores!

The party was a lot of fun, though there was one interesting twist. My husband and I had joked at the Indian wedding that our culture was so “boring” as we had no cool traditions – clearly this bride and groom wanted to prove that wrong. Both had taken Irish step dance lessons as children as had their siblings (and some other cousins), so they got up to show off their moves – with an Irish folk band (another cousin) to accompany them! My husband watched and finally looked at me and said – you know, this is the ultimate white person dance – you don’t move your upper body at all!

Oh we are so culturally diverse and accepting…