Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Family Wedding


What would you say if your four-year-old daughter told you she was getting married?  The very next day. To her brudder

We had a lot of questions for our child bride: What time? What will you wear? Do we sit on the bride's side or the groom's side? Are you sure you're ready to make such a serious commitment? Is Sam? Shouldn't we wait at least until he has a few teeth? 

We really shouldn't have worried: she had it all figured out. We were just along for the ride.


She took such joy in planning all the little details.


She de-petaled many flowers for the flower girl.


For her own bouquet, she filled an empty tomato paste can with all the blooms she could find along the side of the house.




She decorated the fence that would serve as the backdrop for the ceremony and decided what everyone in attendance would be wearing.  (She denied my request to keep my jeans on under my mandated "crinkly red dress" and also my request to wear my casual flats. She did, however, grant my petition to expand my role beyond mere bridesmaid to bridesmaid/photographer, which I felt was generous.)




The flower girl was darling and, happily, managed to overcome a brutal imaginary injury she had sustained earlier in the afternoon to participate fully in the festivities. 



You didn't know that "full participation" as flower girl includes flashing the ring bearer? Huh, maybe that's a California thing.



The ring bearer performed his duties efficiently and exactly as instructed. He's a good sport.



The moment the groom beheld his bride was, of course, magical. He was speechless. He was also quite hungry, so we kept feeding him baby crackers throughout the ceremony. But then the flower girl insisted "I'm a baby too! I eat crackers toooooo!" And then the bride felt it was unfair that everybody else got to have crackers and she didn't. And the bridesmaid/photographer just wanted to get her preschool-aged daughter married off to her infant son so everybody could just eat dinner already because dinner is just the first of many stops on the lights-out-for-the-night train.  But, anyways, yes, all very magical.


Alice was positively radiant. 



The ceremony was beautiful and brief.  It consisted of everyone walking down the aisle (except the groom, for obvious reasons), the bride putting a ring on her pointer finger, and then a kiss to seal the deal. 





Afterwards, Alice rolled her eyes skyward and fake-dreamily proclaimed that this was "the happiest day of her life."

It was a happy day indeed.