What a great wedding!

It was in an old church, built in 1880. The bride was beautiful. The Groom was nervous. The pastor was long winded. The weather was hot. The food was terrific.

I think my son ate, about a third of the wedding chow. We took some home, also. I end up being the one who ferries the little plates back and forth to the table; somewhere after we were almost done taking away all of the neat wedding food the new couple was taken off by a horse drawn carriage. Yes, this is a theme with the weddings lately - but my brother's wife organizes these things.

Climbing into my brother's wifes car afterward, I was struck how well they were getting along - and having been married for 14 years, I am not implying honeymoon stuff, but rather, the sort of dignified partnership that good marriages tend to create. Honestly, they're both slightly cold people. Lawyer. Marketer. I hear the USSR will be opening soon... as vacation land for... :-) and yes, if you can finish this sentence you're a Jackson Browne fan.

People came from as far away as Denver. They danced together an irish blessing, and then, off they went in a horse drawn carriage.

The only thing I regret is that vehicular sabotage seems to be no longer de rigeur for weddings. When I was a kid I remembered the number we did on my uncle's car, with sardine cans opened under their seats. Heh heh. Shoe polish on the bumper. Tin cans dragging along the road. They drove off in their volvo, heading towards Savannah, and nobody on the road would have been the wiser. Well, that is unless you noticed that the groom tied the bride's garter to the rearview mirror.

Fortunately, we were able to get a "Just Married" sign made up about two feet tall, behind the horse drawn carriage that took them to their car. Well at least I have one more cousin. And she increased her odds exponentially this weekend, catching the bouquet, one, and moreover, losing about 30 pounds, two. (seriously, she really looks good!)

I don't really like weddings, but I have a natural tendency in my personality to sort of see the bigger picture in everything and I looked up and in the chapel I saw a stained glass image of John and Charles Wesley and thought - wow, in this small chapel the entire methodist church in the USA, began- and here are two people uniting in the same place - what will their future hold! And so I had fun. Life is always fun when you can try at it from a standpoint of winner take all.

My daughter asked "Dad, why is it that everyone says the Groom is a lucky man, but they never say that about the bride?"