Two Weddings

My brother-in-law Steve and my sister Annie got married a week apart on Saturdays in July. Both are the second oldest among their siblings. Both had destination weddings. For the happiness of both these family members our little family had been praying.

Steve married his longtime girlfriend Joy on a beach in Hawaii:

 

And my lovely sister Annie married her man under an enormous tree of wedding lore in San Saba, Texas:

 

 

There were no bridesmaids or groomsmen at Steve and Joy's wedding, but they asked all of his nieces to be flower girls. The girls wore Aloha dresses and shell jewelry, gifts from their uncle and new aunt. Jon's oldest daughter, Lily, flung the flower petals down on the ground by fistfuls, scowling as if she had great disdain for the flimsy things, making everyone laugh. The best part of the wedding was the look on Steve's face when he saw his bride walking down that verdant aisle toward the ocean. He cried. My husband said it was the first time he had seen his brother cry, and, I must say, Joy truly did look stunning in her gorgeous gown and white, fragrant lei with flowers pinned in her dark hair.

 

The older nieces jostled each other for the chance to take the bouquet from Aunt Joy. The look on their faces when the bride and groom kissed was comic; they all looked as if they were watching a fairytale ending. 

 

Our Danny Sam was the ring bearer. He kept scratching his sandaled feet during most of the ceremony. He even tried to lean on Uncle Steve to get better reach to his tickly toes during the presider's poignant discourse on the meaning of marriage, slipping off his sandals and attempting to balance. 

That wonderful event was the whole reason our family went to Hawaii this past July. The reception was a blast. The DJ invited all the married couples to take the dance floor, and then he started adding up years for anniversaries; anyone who had been married less than the pronounced time had to exist the floor. Matthew and I were there for a good while, we thought, but his parents stayed much longer, married now for more then 40 years. I felt a lump in my throat watching the few remaining couples; it was a beautiful testimony in a fickle age. When only one couple remained, neighbors of Steve and Joy, the DJ asked them to reveal their secrets to the newly married, and the gentleman replied, "Say, 'Yes, dear.' " It was cliché, but we all laughed. Then the wife added, "Have fun."

 

Matthew was having a good time

Fire dancers performed, making me clutch my chest and suck in my breath the whole time in fear of mishaps and in awe of their maneuvers with spinning rods of flame. It gave whole new meaning to burning your candle at both ends. The youngest one was a mere five years of age but full of bravado.

 

What was more astounding was that my oldest son Berto danced with his little sister Ella. I really wish I had gotten pictures. I would frame them on the wall in a collage as a reminder that those two do indeed love each other. Watching all my daughters and sons dance with their cousins, uncles and grandparents was precious and memorable. For me it was the best part.

 

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I was home but a day from Hawaii before flying out again for my sister's wedding. It was a small gathering of close family and dear friends. We all stayed in a quaint, tidy B&B in San Saba.

 

On the morning of the wedding, my sister Annie, Dad, Mom, and I sat downstairs and put together the bouquets, corsages, and buccaneers for the wedding. What am I saying??? My sister Annie did it all with precision, beautifully with a little help from Mom. I myself was confused by how to properly manipulate the floral tape.

 

As we dressed and primped before the wedding, the ladies had delicious mimosas. (I know, because I had at least two.) We chatted, shared feelings, laughed and cried, and the bride fixed our hair. Yes, she fixed our hair, because none of us had her crazy skills in braiding, curling and pinning.

 

We drove to the Wedding Oak down a dirt road bordered by barbed wire fences and hay fields. It was hot, but a welcome breeze followed us. My sister hid from Keith, her groom, behind her friend's SUV. Our mother was already crying. As I looked at Annie, I cried, too, because she looked so lovely. Her cascading golden hair - which she had fixed herself in intricate curls pinned back by silvery pins - embodied the rays of the bright sun.

 

The flower girl was the daughter of Annie's good friend, Jen, and her wheelchair was ornamented with pretty ribbons. Keith's dad was his best man. I was the Matron of Honor. The father of the bride was also the preacher and celebrant. He walked her down the dirt road as Keith's mother, Jan, played the violin beneath the sweeping branches of the colossal oak, and Keith's brother took pictures. Then Dad gave Annie's arm to her groom and turned to face her.

 

He asked, "Who gives this woman in marriage?"

 

My mother replied, "Her father and I do."

 

It wasn't long after those words that Dad got emotional, and as he struggled to speak, the breeze sighed through the broad leaves above.

 

And someone in a pickup truck idled just up the lane in order not to disrupt the ceremony.

 

What an unusually beautiful place for a wedding, beneath that magnificent oak! Just as Dad prepared to pronounce Keith and Annie husband and wife, the wind picked up dramatically and rushed about us for several moments, rustling the leaves. It was an impressive moment - at least I thought so. It was as if the Holy Spirit said, I make it so.

 

After much picture-taking, during which passing Texans in their trucks cried, "Congratulations!", we all went to the charming Wedding Oak Winery to celebrate. My sister designed the decorations for the reception area herself. Her gorgeous bouquets and hand-stenciled mason jars with tea lights rested atop burlap squares on the tables. She had made pretty little name tags tied on the keepsake wineglasses, and a cake topper of her own creation presided over the cake. The décor was rustic yet artsy, accented as it was by enormous wine barrels. It was completely unique, and I was amazed by what my sis had done - but not too surprised, considering all that she did for my own wedding.  

 

We ate a wonderfully filling meal with delicious wine - I particularly enjoyed the Viognier - and then Dad brought out his guitar and sang the most beautiful wedding song ever meant for a daughter: Where's The Little Girl, a song he wrote many years ago. It's the right of each of his daughters (and granddaughters someday) to hear it on our wedding day, and Annie had it sung to her for the first time. Then she and Dad danced to Landslide (Fleetwood Mac). the perfect choice, before Keith took her into his arms for At Last (Eta James). As I watched I, though missing my own man pretty badly on such a romantic occasion, was so very grateful to witness and experience it all.

 

 

 

 

A Dress For One Day - In Paris (by Daniel Hylton)

Forty years ago last August, for reasons no one understands, a beautiful woman named Karen Asher agreed to marry me.  After my initial shock at her acceptance of my proposal wore off and I was capable of speech once again, we set a date, chose our invitations, and she went wedding dress shopping with her father.

She didn't have many options.  You see, we lived in a part of the country known in the vernacular as a "backwater".  The largest town around was forty-five miles away and was small by the standards of almost any other state in the union.

They found a tiny wedding shop and looked through the meager offerings on display.  And, lo and behold, miracle of miracles, she found the perfect dress.

I've heard it described several times through the years: it was very traditional, Spanish in style, with tight-fitting, long sleeves that came to a point at her wrists, and it was small at the waist with layered scallops of lace dropping down the bustled back to a cathedral train.  It fit her willowy frame perfectly.

Wait, you say.  You've heard it described?  Didn't you see it on the wedding day?

No; sadly, I did not see that dress.  Ever.

Lacking the proper means of storing the dress, they decided to pay the shopkeeper to keep it safe until the big day two months later.  The week of the wedding, Karen and her father went to retrieve the dress.  And it was gone.  At first, the shopkeeper tried to pass off another dress as the one they'd chosen.  When pressed, she finally broke down and admitted that another bride who'd considered that same dress had decided to purchase it.  The shopkeeper sold it, intending to replace it before Karen and her father returned.  But the dress could not be re-supplied.  Karen was devastated.  Her lovely dress was gone.

The owner of the shop offered them any dress she had at the price they'd already paid, even if it was her most expensive.  Karen, of course, did not take advantage.  Still, even with every dress in the shop at her disposal, there were difficulties.  The problem was that she was a very slim young woman and few dresses fit her properly.  Eventually, she settled for a dress that was two sizes too big for her, but looked nice.  It was beautiful, but of course it was not her dress.

Now, I've lived long enough to know what some soon-to-be brides would do in that situation.  After an enormous hissy fit was thrown (and justifiably so), the wedding would be postponed until the dress could be properly replaced.

Amazingly, astonishingly, Karen decided that marrying me at the appointed time was more important than wearing her perfect dress on that one day that comes but once in a lifetime.

Through the years, she has never told me this tale, or sought commiseration from me.  I've only heard it on those occasions when I've eavesdropped on her conversations with her daughters or her friends when the subject turns, as it so often does between women, to weddings and dresses.

Not being able to wear her chosen dress on her wedding day is but one of the many disappointments my elegant, lovely wife has graciously endured through forty years of marriage to me.  Through times both thick and thin, she has been my loving and relentlessly optimistic companion.  And the times have been "thin" far more often that they have been "thick".

This year, 2013, was our fortieth wedding anniversary.  We decided three years ago that we would save up the money to go to Paris.  We scrimped, we saved, we diligently planned.  What she didn't know was that I had a separate account into which I slipped a hundred dollars here and a hundred dollars there - every time I found a hundred dollars that wasn't absolutely needed elsewhere.  On my birthday this last Spring she gave me five hundred dollars to buy new golf clubs; a new driver perhaps, or new irons.

She drew her own conclusions from the expression of joy that came over my face.

A couple weeks after my birthday, she asked to see my new clubs.  "I'm holding onto the money," I told her, "until I see the new Callaways that are coming out in July."  She frowned but then nodded.  "Okay," she agreed, "just be sure you get those clubs."

By May, our plane tickets for Europe were purchased, our hotel reserved, and our expense money on hand in Euros.

One day in June, I emptied my secret account.  "Let's go out for lunch," I suggested.  Twenty minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot at Glamour Bridal in San Antonio.  She looked at me with raised, questioning eyebrows.  "I can't replace that dress you lost all those years ago," I told her.  "That dress is gone."  I pulled the money from my wallet.  "But I can buy you a new one."

She cried pretty much all the way through the appointment I'd made with the shop earlier in the week. In the end, we found a dress that really made her cry.  With happiness.  I even had enough money left to buy her a jeweled hairpiece.

As we left the shop later that day with her beautiful new dress, a form-fitting Maggie Sottero, she wiped her eyes and looked over at me.  "What are we going to do with this dress?"

"You're going to wear it," I replied.  "In Paris.  We'll go to a church and take pictures.  We'll take a cab to the Eiffel Tower and take pictures.  Then we'll go to Le Procope (the oldest restaurant in continuous business anywhere in the world) and get the waiter to take more pictures.  Basically, we're going to take thousands of pictures of you - in that dress."

And we did.  First, though, I surprised her with a bouquet from the florist near our hotel.  (That was another thing that required "setting right".  Someone forgot to give her her bouquet forty years ago, so she walked down the aisle without it.)

First, we took pictures at the church of St. Germain des Pres:

Then, of course, at the Eiffel:

And finally, at dinner at Le Procope:

And here is my lovely bride in her "dress for one day".

As we walked the streets of Paris, young women asked again and again to have their photo taken with my lovely bride, assuming that we were newlyweds.  I didn't correct them; I felt like we were, too.

Once, as I was standing to the side while yet another group of young women were having their photo taken with Karen for good luck, an older gentlemen nudged me in the ribs and said, "You have you a young, very pretty one there, don't you?"

As usual, folks assumed that I was a man of means who'd landed a "trophy wife".  They couldn't know that this beautiful woman had done without many things for many years just to be with me and raise my children.

She's not a trophy; she's a treasure.  My treasure.