The case against clairvoyance

The Resident Fan Boy and I are trembling on the brink of another major wedding anniversary -- but not this year. Next year.

I post a wedding photo on Facebook each June, in part to preserve photos on the internet, so I decided that this year, not being a major anniversary, but a sizeable one - they get bigger annually - I should skip the usual ones of bride and groom, and go for a shot of the guests.

I chose "before-and-after" shots of the moment that I, having been made to turn my back, threw my bouquet. In the first, the single ladies, all either born in the same year as me, or just a couple of years before or after, are standing in wait. In the second, Double Leo Sister is spiking the bouquet like a volleyball into the arms of a woman due to be married in a month.

And now, years later, I find myself gazing at the young women in their pretty summer dresses, remembering that, of the crowd, only one woman remains single. (She's school principal and a proud aunt.) Another died a dozen years ago. Of the others, about half divorced their eventual husbands; three married twice.

I look in the background, and see my aunt, and others who were middle-aged and older at the time -- all gone now; and a young man with his cup of coffee - years before losing a son to suicide.

Prescience would be such a burden, particularly at weddings.

A lousy choice for a first dance at a wedding

I heard this in a restaurant, identified it with "Shazam", and looked it up on YouTube. In the comments for the official video - a video which I found unfunny and slapdash - someone said it was the first song at her wedding reception. An odd choice, if you listen to the lyrics.



This isn't the official video, by the way.

Flash and burn

The Resident Fan Boy's sister forwarded an email from her future daughter-in-law's sister.

Apparently this young woman thinks it would be a fabulous idea to surprise my husband's nephew and his bride with a flash-mob at their wedding reception next month:  The effect will be much better if EVERYONE participates. Even for those people apposed [sic] to dancing please try your best, and stand near the back if you want.

Unable to restrain our curiosity, we took a look at her video on YouTube and the first thing we noticed was that it is seventeen minutes long.  It begins with the Maid of Honour - she actually signed her email to the RFB's sister with this, like a rank or position - a fresh young thing who looks about, I dunno, fourteen, but is probably ten years older - standing in a well-appointed hallway in shorts, her bare feet in fourth position.  Her biography at her sister's wedding website describes her as a business major who loves long walks on the beach and organizing her sorority.  Her first name (withheld for obvious reasons) pinpoints her squarely as a nineties baby.

She demonstrates the choreography, which, mercifully, is for only two minutes of flash-mobbing, saying earnestly in uptalk that it is "not too hard" and reiterating her desire that everybody join in.  The next fifteen minutes (although I have not been able to bring myself to watch more than the first five minutes) consist of her breaking up the dance into little pieces and repeating them a few times each, complete with instructions of who is going to be doing what.  Apparently, there will be different moves, according to whether you're connected to the bride or groom -- so not complex at all.

After each segment, she plays the damn music again.
So we can "practice" (sic).
It's One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful" mashed with some other song I don't recognize.

Did I mention this dance involves two moves that involve dropping down to nearly touch the knee to the floor?

Golly.  I'd bless her cotton socks, if she were wearing any.

So the Resident Fan Boy and I chuckled kindly -- she's almost endearing in her sweetly controlling way -- and decided against sending a video of the song "Schadenfreude" from Avenue Q to elder daughter, the one who actually has to attend this wedding.  The RFB did forward the instructional video. The responding texts began to appear within minutes:

"I WON'T"

"Seriously though, if my maid of honour plans that, she is to be stopped."

"If I end up with a dancing infant as my maid of honour, I am to be stopped."

We pointed out that hiding in the washroom for two minutes should be easily accomplished (provided there is room), and I did send this YouTube snippet of an early episode of Friends.

For some reason it came to mind.

Kindling the light

The Resident Fan Boy and I have been married for -- a while. It is our anniversary today, the day we look back to the official beginning of our marriage, picking out memories from what at the time was a blur.

Weddings are a bit like Christmas: all that preparation and it's all over in a flash. What I do remember from that time of tip-toe-ing across the emotional minefield of other people's feelings --isn't that what a family wedding is when you boil it down? -- was an overarching desire to avoid the fairy-tale aspect of the whole thing. I didn't want it to be the best day of my life because I was still very young and I really wanted to have things to look forward to. Still do, frankly.

We didn't write our own vows. The stark and rather bleak promises of the traditional wedding service are more authentic than any earnest couple can come up with; they describe marriage more accurately than anyone standing on the threshold of such a partnership is able to understand. It's only after years of struggling to live those vows that you come anywhere near to comprehending what they mean. Young as we were, we must have suspected some tiny part of that, mainly from looking at the marriages around us.

Early on in this NaBloPoMo, I went on for a bit about Phyllis McGinley. "Mid-century Love Letter" summed up our desires and terrors, although it was closer to the end of the century when it was read at our service. I'm pretty sure we appalled my very Anglican mother-in-law, but she wasn't in favour of the match to begin with:

Stay near me. Speak my name. Oh, do not wander
By a thought's span, heart's impulse, from the light
We kindle here. You are my sole defender
(As I am yours) in this precipitous night,
Which over earth, till common landmarks alter,
Is falling, without stars, and bitter cold.
We two have but our burning selves for shelter.
Huddle against me. Give me your hand to hold.
So might two climbers lost in mountain weather
On a high slope and taken by the storm,
Desperate in the darkness, cling together
Under one cloak and breathe each other warm.
Stay near me. Spirit, perishable as bone,
In no such winter can survive alone.

One little vestige of the fairy-tale did manage to creep in. My wedding bouquet. I loved it and when it was brought to me as I waited in the church basement, I really felt like a bride. It's a good thing I had to toss it; the most beautiful things have to be let go if you ever hope to keep them.

Nice day for a black wedding

These skeletons in a medieval woodcut style (actually styrofoam) appeared last week around the shared entrance to our local bookstore and SconeWitch. If you can't quite make it out, the five skeletons to the left are clutching books and those to the right have scones and mugs, although if you click on the picture, you may get a larger version. I think it rather gives the impression of entering a Gothic cathedral, possibly a Spanish one.

I quickly snapped a few shots, then boarded a bus with the Resident Fan Boy to accompany younger daughter to a voice lesson.

Our route took us past the former St Brigid's Church. Well, I guess it is still St Brigid's, but I believe it stopped being a church about five years ago, to great outcry from the faithful, of course. I saw a knot of people out front, lots of deep purple stockings. I thought it might be some sort of art gathering, as that's what St Brigid's is used for a lot these days, but a closer look revealed that it was a small wedding, the members gathering on the steps for a group portrait. I figured out who the bride was by her bouquet; she was draped in a black dress and her attendants were clutching individual and simply huge blood-red gerbera daisies.

Well, I guess you can still get married at St Brigid's even if it's deconsecrated, provided you have a marriage commissioner to perform the ceremony, or clergy from one of the more liberal faiths. However, given the colour scheme of this wedding, the SconeWitch, particularly as it looked today, would have worked too.

Cheating, but we need some joy, don't we?

I'm considering signing up for NaBloPoMo this month, but I'm running into trouble already, so I'm taking the cheater's way out --- posting a YouTube video. No doubt everyone has seen this by now, but gosh, wouldn't you want your wedding (to say nothing of your marriage) to start this way?