San Diego Day 2: The Wedding Party

The day of the wedding dawned with less cloud cover than the day before, and it grew to be a lovely late September Saturday in San Diego, perfect for a matrimonial celebration. Dear Husband spent the morning with my family exploring Balboa Park. I spent the morning in the bridal suite yakking, blogging, cross-stitching, and eventually getting my make-up done. Then I went back to my room to get dressed. The groom's side wore navy or marine blue, and the bride's side wore wine or maroon. 

The afternoon was for photographs. Here are some unofficial ones--I can't wait to see what the photographers captured, especially with the stunning background of the city behind us!

Then it was time for the sunset ceremony on the balcony overlooking the bay, officiated by one of the bride's friends. They had asked me to choose a reading, and they wanted it to be a surprise. I knew that the usual scriptures and standard wedding passages about young love weren't right, so I looked half-heartedly--until one night, scrolling through Facebook when I should have been lying down to fall asleep, I stumbled upon a poem by Sierra DeMulder that said everything I wanted to convey about growing old together in beautiful verse. I purchased a copy of the collection, Ephemera, to read before gifting it to the happy couple.

NEW VOWS

When my best friend got married,
he walked down the aisle to a song
about death. Isn’t that what marriage is
all about? he laughed. A promise
to be together until one of you dies?
I regret my wedding vows, too focused
on the benign—our boundless laughter,
how I cherish just waking up together.
I should have said, I take thee and all
the treachery that aliveness guarantees.
I should have said, I will help bury
your elders. I take your hand and your heart
murmur; the cancerous growth above
your father’s ear. I take your family
history of alcoholism and give you back
a possible covenant of dementia, miscarriage,
high blood pressure. In sickness and in
car accidents. In sickness and in the mundane.
Shared calendars and anniversaries spent
arguing about our budget. You told me once
Great Danes have a short life expectancy,
only 6-10 years if you’re lucky, and I cried:
who would sign up to love something
so impermanent? O, beloved, we have
been so happy lately, it’s making us nervous.
And isn’t that what marriage is all about:
a love so darling, so hallowed and exposed,
we both volunteer to be its keeper—when
the joy runs dry, when the body fails—
not because but in glorious spite of
the unpalatable, impossible fact that
someday one of us will wake up first
only to find ourselves alone.

Then I told them that I hoped that inevitable day would be a long time in the future and that the reason it hurts is because the intervening decades are so full of joy, of weirdness, and of love. I got a lot of positive feedback after the ceremony, and I wish I could start a movement to make DeMulder the next Rumi. Happily, several guests have told me they have or will buy the book, which tells what I assume is a quasi-autobiographical story about starting an ending relationships, queerness, and (in)fertility.

The happy couple kissed, jumped the broom, and then we partied!

Good food and drinks, fun tunes, and lots of dancing.

The tables were beautifully decorated with (fake) candles, mirrors, and fresh flower centerpieces. The flowers were mostly roses with some hydrangea and baby's breath. The cake topper says "mutual weirdness forever." The funny thing about that is that I had teased DH when we arrived to San Diego, thanking him for coming "to see my family get bigger," and then we debated whether it could get weirder after he joined. Apparently it can! ;-) I'm so pleased to have gained such an amazing sister, and that my brother has found the love of his life.