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Sunday, November 06, 2005

My Cousin's Wedding

I got that dress in time for yesterday’s wedding but when I took it out of the box, I realized that the jacket was covered in glitter. I generally don’t like to wear sparkles but I didnt have time to get something else and, otherwise, I liked the outfit a lot. It worked though, my grandmother liked it a lot so it accomplished what it was supposed to.

The wedding was very nice. It was at one of those “mega churches” that I have read articles about but have never actually seen. The ceremony was a multi-media presentation with music, both live and recorded, and a slide show with baby pictures of the couple. Since I love looking at pictures, I enjoyed that part of the ceremony a lot. I often get mailings from this church and was a little bit curious about it. It is quite a large thing. It was more of a church complex than what I would consider a church. I imagine it becomes quite the social hub on Sundays.

I didnt feel terribly comfortable there although there was definately something welcoming about the people. I got the feeling that the pastor was a genuinely nice man. And yet, I found myself actually cringing at the vows which were a sort of modern equivalent of having the women promise to “love, honor and *obey*” I noticed several women around me crying at that part of the ceremony and while I doubt they were crying about the inequality of the vows, I got a little bit of amusement imagining that they were.

The Bride was very beautiful and my cousin looked pretty spiffy in his tux. I loved all the autumn colors they had. The flowers were potted mums and the church was decorated with fall leaves. The bridesmaids wore gowns in a brownish maroon that I thought was a particularly lovely color. All in all, it was a very nice, well put together, wedding.

The reception was held at some swanky country club in Bloomfield Hills with valet parking being the only option. Had I known that, I would have vacuumed the mountain of dog hair out of my nine year old rusting car...and taken the used coffee cup out...and the trash on the floor. But, oh well! I apologized to the kid parking my car. He was very charming and just said, “Hey, don’t worry about us, *we* are regular people”

Well...alllll righty then!

The funny thing is that they are having another wedding next weekend. They had this wedding in her church but they are going to do the whole Russian Orthodox wedding thing next weekend. I guess I'll go to that one too. I dont buy into the theology of the Russian Orthodox church but I think they have the most beautiful weddings I have ever seen. They are long though and the pews are hard. Northridge, btw, had deluxe padded pews. Something that if mentioned to the folks in charge the Russian Orthodox church would surely result in a reply of "You are lucky to have pews at all, in Russia, they have no pews and make you stand and kneel on the cold hard marble" ;)

The whole two wedding thing seems kind of interesting to me. My brother is doing it too but for different reasons. He and Katrina actually got married a few weeks ago so they can start the legal process of getting her a green card. As it is, she still wont be able to move to this country for some time after their big Catholic church wedding later this month. That has got to kind of suck...being married but not actually being able to shack up.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

two weddings? i hope they don't expect two gifts!

Lynne said...

No. I dont think they expect two gifts. I actually havent bought them even one gift yet. Earlier this week, I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond where they were registered and found that *everything* had been purchased. I was just going to give them cash but my sister mentioned that they had registers for a few things at Marshall Fields.

I looked them up online there and found that they have already received EVERYTHING on that list too. I had to laugh because they registered for their fine china and crystal there. They registered for 16 place settings that cost over $100 each. Their wine glasses were $60 each and they only got 15 of those (so I am going to pick up the last one and then they will have a complete set). I dont know if they registered for fine silverware anywhere but I imagine they did. Anyways, it occurred to me that they were getting near $200 a place setting x16. Which means that if they were to have a large dinner party, they would have over $3000 worth of stuff on the table.

Then, I started to think of my friends when we were 25 years old and the dinner parties we used to have. I estimated the number of plates and glasses broken at a typical dinner party and figured that it would take me and my friends about five years to break 1/2 the stuff. By 30, my friends and I were less worried about "stuff" and our previous social norm of always having the proper stemware and matching china was out the window and no one had matching glasses anymore and you were LUCKY to be drinking wine from stemware instead of from a washed out jelly jar.

I estimated that the rest of the fancy place settings would be broken in 10 minutes at the first party thrown after my 30th birthday. So all in all, I am glad I didnt get married and have people buy me those kinds of gifts because if they had, I would be feeling guilty for no longer having any of it.

Which doesnt mean that I would care if anything happens to the single wine glass my cousin will get from me since it is the last thing on their registry that no one has bought.

As for my brother. I dont know if he'll have the same problem with getting everything they registered for. He and his wife are having a much smaller wedding but they didnt seem to register for too much stuff either.

trace said...

Wow...that's a lot of stuff.