The Backyard Wedding

This summer I got a lesson in why weddings are so expensive and nerve wracking.  For weeks we trimmed, landscaped, hung lights and planned, shopped, built and fretted.  Then, when that was done, we undid what we had and re-landscaped, re-hung the lights and fretted some more.  For the most part it was my wife and I and the bride and groom to be – my son James and his fiancee Lindsey, but a couple times we had gatherings of friends and family to help.  The first such gathering was a disaster by any definition.  It poured rain when it hadn’t rained in weeks.  Then the next day, virtually everyone who had come over got sick with the flu.  No one actually did any yelling at us, but I feel there was a simmering anger out there from some people who, in some cases, missed several days of work.

We were watching the forecast nervously, as it changed back and forth in the week or so leading up to the big day, calling for sun then rain and sometimes one website would forecast one and another would contradict it.  Finally, with a few days to go, the sites all started to agree: it was going to rain, or at least be showery.  So we ordered up a 20′ x 40′ tent and redid the lighting yet again.  The end result was pretty impressive, I think.  We zap strapped rope lights in a big X over head inside the tent, which looked cool and threw lots of light.  We had the yard framed in curtains of lights in all the surrounding trees too.  For the ceremony, we built an 8′ x 8′ stage hung with a lacy curtain and footed with pleated gold fabric.  At the back of the stage were more lights which we turned on at dark.

wedding the night before

It rained during the ceremony, which they say is a good omen: knots that are tied wet are tighter and harder to undo.  I felt bad for the maid of honour.  No doubt she spent a lot of time and possibly money to look as good as she did, then in the big moment all she could do was stand helplessly to the side of the stage and get rained on.  Someone did run over and hand her an umbrella, but she had absorbed a lot of rain by then.  My son got pretty choked up reading his vows.  I will never give him a hard time about it, because I couldn’t even go to the mike and say a speech for them.  Merely the thought of it choked me up.  I had to make do by writing a speech, which the other kids helped edit, and I stood far away and watched it read.  What a chicken!  Lucky I didn’t put out an eye with my feathers.  Years ago, at my niece’s wedding, I was talked into speaking and what I said was so short and choppy my sister called it a haiku.

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The rest of the event went beautifully.  We ate, there were some touching speeches (the woman who lives directly behind us told us she was listening through the trees to the speeches and they got her crying), and then the drinking and socializing got going.  Everyone was on their best behaviour, and there were a few mismatches of personalities that could have clashed but didn’t.  It was a nice beginning to their lives together.

The next day we had to clean up a lot of stuff, most of it soggy and wet.  It was reminiscent of the aftermath of Woodstock, but thankfully on a much smaller scale.  But the keg was still half full, and there were lots of leftovers to eat, so things were still pretty good.