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august 20, 2000. (there are pictures. lots of 'em. but you have to go this way to see 'em.) the reception: a chaotic revel in two parts.
~ part the first ~
We milled around in the warm sunshine for a bit, separating to find particular relatives & friends to kiss & smile at. My friends seemed hesitant, awkward in the crush, while my family put themselves forward & waited for their turn to congratulate. We snapped a few official shots and dozens of personal cameras clicked & whirred, taking the golden joy of the moment and committing it to posterity. Then we hopped in the Lincoln & headed over to the reception hall to figure out what was what.
Those first minutes in the hall were some the most low-pressure enjoyment I had the whole day. The Boy - now the Husband - and I buzzed around like happy bees, setting up baskets, boxes, pictures, books, pens and other miscellany. It was when my grandmother and uncles arrived that things got complicated. I would decide to place something somewhere & it would get moved when my back was turned...then a half-dozen people would tell me why it was better off where they placed it, taking up my time in needless repetition. I was still buzzing, though, and was not annoyed. I did, however, start panicking when people - my uncle, most notably - began to urge us to get the receiving line started. My parents were nowhere in sight, nor was there any older person there to coach us on etiquette - and I've never headed up a receiving line before! There was no one there to pour the liqour shots and no one there from the Boy's family, which was all wrong. But it was like being herded off a social cliff. We had no choice. So rather than annoy the few people who seemed anxious to be seated, we formed a line & awkwardly began to receive guests.
And then, of course, the uncle that was so eager to see things get started held up the entire line talking to both the Boy and myself for at least five minutes each (!) As if he couldn't do that when we were milling around, for pete's. But we were locked in, and we spent the next hour standing, smiling & greeting. It's funny - you say all these insincere things when you're in these situations, things that follow form but not your heart. At least, that's what usually happens. The receiving line was one of the few times in my life when I actually had poise, when some social creature took over my emotions and made them all true. It helped knowing almost everyone's name - 8 months of pouring over the guest list had hard-wired the damn thing into my memory, which turned out immensely useful. The Boy was a little at sea, but he didn't let it bother him. He never does.
There were, also unusually, very few moments in which I felt uncomfortable. I was a bit bored when my uncle was monopolizing the Boy in the beginning because I have exactly 2 things to say to his kids and I'd already said them in twenty seconds. Another strange moment came when my other uncle (the father of the Anti-Amoret who made such a spectacle of himself at her wedding three years ago) said to me with no trace of irony or jocularity, "well, it's finally your day." As if I'd spent my best years mouldering! (I'm 24 with a university degree, his daughter was 22 and pregnant when she got married) As if I had waited forever in engagement! (my engagement was 9 months, his daughter's was a year and a half) As if! I must point out, however, that my anger is a current reaction; at the time I was just amused. This is the man who told my mother 23 years ago on the way back from the church that my baptism wasn't a "real" baptism because it wasn't Catholic. You just have to laugh.
When it was over, a few of us milled around in the lobby, waiting for the tables to be prepared for the first toast. My maids, however, had shot inside as soon as the line was over (their shoes were not as practical as mine, y'see). We chose our entering song as a joke, not knowing until a few days before that we needed an entering song. But as those first sublime chords of "It's Not Unusual" thundered through the room, it seemed inspired, or at least a whole lot of fun. We galloped in, and the chaos began.
First: speeches & toasts. Dirk led a toast to the Queen (I say quirky, you say Imperialist), Exodus gave a bare-bones toast to us, and Agamemnon led us in prayer before we began the serious business of eating. We had dragooned Pixie into being our mistress of ceremonies for the night, as a way of assuaging my guilt for not picking her as a bridesmaid. In addition to introductions, she played leader of our "kiss" game in which trivia questions about the wedding party (with emphasis on us, of course) were dispersed to the tables to general amusement. Fully half the questions were taken from the wedding program distributed at the church earlier, so people had a pretty good crack at it. (By the way, the idea for character bios came from none other than Amy & Andy of When In Doubt, Add Parsley fame. Thanks guys! It worked out wonderfully!)
I had put off writing the damn things until it was literally the hour before the ceremony; consequently, some were pretty weird for being rushed. And they were a lot easier than I'd anticipated - Pixie blew her whistle 4 times in the first minute before I negotiated a cease-fire until the first course has at least ended. It's hard work sitting & arranging a pouffy wedding dress, getting to your feet, sitting & arranging the crinoline so the chair leg doesn't pin & dirty it, arranging a napkin, getting to your feet…etc. After four whistles, I was about to collapse. I used the salad course to marshal my energies & was able to give the crowd what it wanted - i.e. spectacle - as the meal went on.
At this point in the proceedings, it's fair to say that the entire wedding party ate to the capacity of their outfits, i.e. until they were forced to stop. The food was wonderful, and I don't think many people noticed that it was mostly vegan. During the pasta course, I looked over at the Boy. It hit me suddenly. "Hey, you look good! You know, I hadn't had a chance to notice until now!"
The best man thought that was funny.
As the courses rolled on, I realized that no one was chaining me to me seat, so I got up & mingled. I felt kind of weird about one particular table: it was the family of the Anti-Amoret, and I had put Scherezade and Gosia there when they called the day before the wedding. It was a placement that amused me considerably: it filled up an insultingly small table and gave a couple of psychological lashes to my girls for calling at the last minute. Not surprisingly, the conversation between my relatives was somewhat strange & disturbing - intensely personal and completely excluding the girls. As Gosia put it later, "I learned far more about your family than I really wanted to know." The girls spent a lot of time between courses mingling elsewhere. I of course found the whole thing kind of funny. Maybe that was because I didn't have to sit there.
(I was later informed that the table of the Boy's father also included my wackily offensive relatives. In essence, my cousin's boyfriend stated publicly that he "gave us two years." What manners! I'm so glad he was invited - no wait. I never wanted him there. Good for me.)
You know, the impact of the bride is utterly amazing. I would walk pass a table and be engaged in conversation to the point where I couldn't get across the room before the next course started. I've never been one for immobility at a social gathering; I like to pick exactly where I want to be at any given time. But being a superstar meant that I had to sacrifice speed & mobility for adoration. Hard cheese, huh?
So we nibbled and mingled and chatted and smiled and then the food was all taken away and the speeches began. Scout's speech was very typically Scout - she repeated something incredulous she had said to Pixie a few years back to the effect of, "Amoret sees all the annoying things the Boy does, but she thinks it's endearing!" Ha. St. Stephen went the sentimental route: making a self-consciously geeky analogy, then connecting the recent meteor showers to us. "Maybe there's room for a new constellation." My father, on the other hand, eschewed the speech prepared by my mother and wandered into heavily sentimental territory. The room began to feel uncomfortable, but a well-timed quip (mine, if you must know) saved the mood. Unlike the weddings I attended in the 80's, there were no telegrams from Italy and no tears. And the best part is that it was over in minutes, letting us get on to the serious business of dancing.
next up...the dancing commences!
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