First off, how cool is that? A New Year’s Eve wedding? Neither of them will have trouble remembering their anniversary, for one thing, (though I think that wouldn’t be an issue for the couple in question, even if they got married on Decemberanuary 62nd,) and for another, what a great guarantee that all of their beloveds would have a fantastic intro to the New Year.

I was at the banquet hall from 9 this morning to 2 this afternoon, helping set up. We arranged photos, assembled plastic wineglasses, cleaned, improvised, and did various crafty things.

Wedding Stuff:

1. For my attire, I found a lovely dress, deep chocolate brown with ribbon straps and a lacy overlay, for thirty-five bucks. It’s a great dress. It’s seldom that I find an outfit that is so exactly what I want. I wore it with a pearl necklace.

(Shut up.)

2. Each member of the wedding party, including the bride and groom, wore a different color of Chuck Taylor’s on their feet.

3. The bride wore a bright red dress, with a train that could stretch from here to the moon and back again. On her way down the aisle, the train swept up a good gathering of the rose petals that I and some others had scattered there earlier in the day.

The red wedding dress thing? I like that a lot.

4. Fuck, I just started crying again.

5. The processional song was one of my all-time favorites, Etta James’s “At Last.”

6. The “minister,” a friend of mine, was ordained online, in a rather impromptu fashion, via a link provided to me by another dear friend.

When the minister pronounced the bride and groom to be Husband and Wife, my date and I giggled when he uttered the words, “by the power vested in me.” It’s okay, the minister giggled, too.

7. The bride was an omni-spiritual angel. The groom, an atheist superhero. (Seriously, the man has saved old ladies from oncoming traffic, and children from burning buildings.)

8. The “altar” was decorated with a cotton chuppa, (which I ironed, thankyouverymuch,) and a weird Chinese mobile-like thingy that was painted with I-Ching hexagrams. The mother of the bride read a passage from her Bahai’i literature. Many of the wedding guests wore crosses.

Dismiss that if you wish. I thought it rocked.

9. The bride and groom wrote their own vows, and everybody goddamned cried.

10. I have the bride and groom to thank for making “You Are My Sunshine” a hymn in my mind, as it was the first song to which they walked down the aisle as Husband and Wife, arm in arm, with the entire company of guests singing along.

You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you …

Reception Stuff:

1. I spent a good deal of time in the kitchen, using a butter knife (there were few utensils handy) to spoon very expensive raw fish onto weird Styrofoamish crackers. This was in keeping with the instructions of the chef, the bride’s brother, who kept flirting with me all freaking night even though my date was rarely further than an elbow-jab away.

2. The “date” part went really well, I think. There was lots of friendly, familiar flirting, which is encouraging for a first date. When I dropped half a piece of cake directly down the center of my dress, he eagerly offered to help me clean up.

We stayed at our table for most of the night, befriending the other couple there, (the male faction of which I remember running into on the El more than a year ago, and he remembers me, too,) constructing towers with the photos on each table, and discovering the use of hot candle wax as paper adhesive. We also made a sculpture incorporating photos of the bride and groom, posies, lilies, and cigarette butts.

At one point in the evening, Date told me I was a “very unusual girl. Complex.” I refuted that. He countered with, “Well, I guarantee you’re more complex than you give yourself credit for.”

Really, I don’t know what to do with that.

He’s a strange guy. I like strange.

3. The members of the bridal party each gave a toast. After that, I sang Johnny Mathis’s “The Twelfth of Never” as the bride and groom cut the cake.

I cracked up in the middle of the second verse, because Bride and Groom were predictably shoving cake up each others’ nostrils. I tried to recover, but just looked at the crowd and said, “I totally forget the rest.” The crowd laughed, so I finished up replacing the lyrics with “la la la something something” until the end:

I’ll love you ‘till the poets run out of rhyme
Until the twelfth of never
And that’s a long, long time.

Cheesy? Yes. But altogether fitting.

When I blurted out that I forgot the words, the groom muttered, “Oh, Kelly,” and left his wife and their cake to hug me, while I sang “La la la something something” into his ear.

Good God.

4. The minister is in love with a Polish man who speaks very little English, and has had trouble socializing with the rest of us, because of the language barrier. Tonight, the minister pulled me aside to tell me his boyfriend had always liked me.

“That woman? I feel good around her,” he had said, in what English he could muster.

5. The reception ended around 1 AM. I told The Date that I was staying to help clean up, he said “I figured as much,” then smiled and went home. I’ll see him next week.

6. The chef gave me about two pounds of marinated edamame. The volunteer barkeeps gave me 5 bottles of Shiraz, a bottle of champagne, and 12 oz. of delicious malted bullshit. Score.

7. That’s it. Happy New Year.

I know that, in list format, this all might sound a little contrived and stupid. But no part of the night was forced. It was loving and irreverent, completely heartfelt and memorable. A part of me can’t believe that I was there. These are my people.

It sometimes hits me that my life is meeting my standards in many of the curious ways I have always wished it would. These realizations happen in waves, and I honestly don’t know what to make of it all.

Again, Happy New Year. Much, much love.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Arm-in-Arm Down Burgundy - 09.05.05

Motivated! - 08.25.05

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

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BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

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BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.

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