There were many fun and “bloggable” moments from the wedding this past weekend, and in order to tell you about one of my favorites, I must first give you a little background from my own wedding.
When my husband and I got married 10 years ago, we lit a Unity candle as part of our ceremony. We asked his parents and my parents to light the side candles, to represent our two families coming together. What we said was, “Hey, would you guys light the candles for us to use in the ceremony?”, but what they heard was apparently something more along the lines of, “You must be in charge of FIRE, and if you make one single misstep you will ruin the wedding, and your families will shun you, and the church will burn down, and the city will be set aflame, and people will die!!”
Because I have never seen anyone stress out about anything like the 4 of them worried about lighting those candles. My husband said he found them all up in the balcony mere minutes before our wedding started, going over their last minute strategies for how they were going to successfully carry out this mission.
Of course everything went just fine, and the entire world exhaled an enormous sigh of relief.
Now flash forward 10 years to my brother’s wedding rehearsal. We were nearing the end, with everyone feeling relieved that they had at least a general idea of what they were supposed to do the next day, when suddenly we heard the following words come out of the wedding director’s mouth: “And so tomorrow, the mothers will be escorted up to the altar to light the candles that the bride and groom will use to light the Unity candle.”
That strange sound you heard on Friday night? That was the sound of the fabric of the Universe ripping apart as my mom shrieked “N-O-O-O! Not the candle AGAIN!” at a pitch indiscernible to the human ear, and then the skin on her face began to melt.
But once again everything went just fine, and we made it to the end of the wedding the next day smoothly and easily. Then came my second favorite moment.
We were all standing around the church, enjoying the fact that the hard part was over and planning how we could change into more comfortable shoes (well, I was anyway), when the bride’s parents came hurrying up to my mom and dad.
“We have to leave now, to make sure we get to the reception before the bride and groom,” they said.
“OK.” (No problem there.)
“We have to be there to perform the ceremony of the bread and the salt.”
“OK.” (Still sounding fine.)
“We will say it in Polish, and then you can repeat it in English.” (That could be a problem, as my parents had only just that moment learned of this particular ceremony, but they were willing to go with it.)
“Hm. But we only actually know the words in Polish. We don’t have a translation in English.” (Yeah, that was going to be a problem.)
But my parents rose magnificently to the occasion, as always, making me ever more thankful that my only responsibility at this wedding was to do one reading, and that I was only required to read it in English.
And to conclude, I think that probably everyone’s favorite moment was one that took place during the wedding ceremony itself. Earlier that day we made sure that my brother had a supply of tissues in his tuxedo pocket which was good, because by the time they got to the exchanging of the vows almost everyone up at the altar needed one.
So he reached into his tuxedo pocket, handed one to his bride, one to the maid of honor, and then took one himself, and the three of them wiped and blew in unison. The priest said, “Yes, we rehearsed this yesterday.”
That lightened things up considerably, but the best part was people’s reaction afterward.
“You knew then that they were really married,” people said, “because when she (the bride) blew her nose on that tissue and then handed it back to him (the groom), he just took it and put it right back into his pocket without any fuss.”
Congratulations, guys! We love you!
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