The Wedding!

Charlotte the Flower Girl

We are now home from the family wedding and I am lost in a blissful haze of love and family and the continuation of life. It was a beautiful ceremony that made me want to renew  my vows with Dave. The wedding was held on a lovely lawn cupped by spruce pine and weeping willow on the property of the Barn at Finley Point. Our part of the family (Dave, Jessie, and I) were late because we were doing last minute family stuff for the wedding party, but it worked out because the wedding wasn't ready to start on-time anyway.

It was a lovely ceremony with interjections of humor by both the bride and the groom--and lots of special moments provided  by the granddaughter Charlotte who stole the show. She was the flower girl, and took it as her solemn duty to place every petal in her bucket on the ground at the beginning of the path before proceeding up the aisle. She was adorably, studiously meticulous as she spread the rose petals on the grass in that one, perfect spot in spite of the exhortations of her mother and other members of the wedding party who kept trying to get her to come on down the aisle and drop some petals towards the end.

For much of the rest of the ceremony she sat next to me in the front row of the audience. People around us were taking pictures of the proceedings and she stated her intention to take pictures too. She asked for my phone, and I gave to her (how could I do anything else?), and she started snapping pictures. Then she'd pause, switch to the photo app, and go flipping through the pictures she had taken. Next she'd hold up the phone, go back to the camera app, and start taking more pictures. She never once asked me how to do anything on the phone, she just crushed it on her own. I have to mention here that she is three years old. I am officially disconnected from the world when a three year-old is more natively savvy with a smart phone than I will ever be. I am having difficulty right now even charging my phone enough to get all the pictures off of it...

I could recount more now about the chaos that was the day with sprained ankles (the groom's daughter--in the wedding party), adjusting the length of two bridesmaid dresses (a combination of scissors and a cigarette lighter), ironing, prescriptions, hand foot and mouth disease, and a host of other wedding-day things, but the only thing any of us needs to remember about the day is that we were lucky enough to be there and to share in the culmination of 25 years of love that went into the wedding of Ed and Susan. The rest of the happenings make for nice stories later, but for tonight, all I want to remember is the look on my uncle's face as he said his vows and pledged himself to the love of his life.

Time for me to go join the love of my life in exhausted slumber. Back to Austin tomorrow--sadness.