The Wedding Feast

Well, yesterday we had the Wedding Feast to make up for the festivities we had to cancel due to the flood. It turned out quite well. For the wedding, we had 107 people RSVP that they were coming, and it was overwhelming. We had projected in the 50-75 people range, and were only inviting close friends and family, so we were rather stunned to have over 100 people say they were coming. Aside from the "where are they going to park?" question, we just felt very loved to have so many people want to come.

Then the flood happened, and the reschedule, and I never knew how very many people travel through the middle of June. At first all we seemed to get was negative RSVPs, but then the positives started rolling in. My partner's parents really went all out to get as much of the extended family there as possible. It worked, since so many of them are quite local. My extended family is all over the south and out west, so none of them came. All told, we had about 60-70 folks there, in the heat, to picnic/potluck and wish us well.

My Dad had asked what the agenda for the whole thing was, and I told him I wasn't sure. But in the end, we ate, and then we passed around cups of flower nectar and did toasts and blessings where two of our friends sang songs they had written for us, another friend played a song on the ipod, and others said a few words. Then there was the "Pelt the Newlyweds" birdseed moment (it felt like a tiny hailstorm, and our skin was so damp from the heat that the seeds stuck to our skin in little chains of fertility along all the edges of our clothing), and then we cut into the cake my sister had made. This cake was a gluten-free mix, transformed into a lemon raspberry jam cake with raspberry whipped cream over the top and fresh strawberries and mango bits confetti-ed over the top. It was fabulous!

As a final wedding act, after everyone had left and it was just the two of us in our silks and pearls, we took our dried flower and ivy crowns that we had worn in the wedding down to the river. We kissed and then tossed them into the lazy green water. They landed next to each other, and it felt just right. Then we drove home, with the rest of cake carefully balanced between us, and took a long cold shower. It was heaven.