At its best, a wedding is a family gathering to celebrate an authentic love story. As a totally glamorous event planner, I find myself a lot with families as they gather. This one - Wedding-pa-looza.
It's always a sprawling, evolving, passionate story that unfolds, hitches and glitches and all. This one - all that and more.
Whole multi-generational sets of relatives come along. 
And then there are the friends for all those generations: bride's friends,
groom's friends, parents' friends, friends abound - 
plus dates or spouses and children and cousins. 
Lots of different people come to the table, so to speak.
Or in the case of this delightfully celebratory wedding, they started in May.
And came to the tables over and over again. 
It was kind of like a marathon. Kind of. Not exactly. 
The Lovely Bride has a close family that is spread out from coast to coast. 
They drove in, they flew in - they would have walked to the family celebration.
The Lovely Bride's friends from childhood . . .
. . . and beyond! Parents have their own set of friends, associates, relations . . 
. . . hired hands, all here to celebrate with the Lovely Bride and her family.
Chilly is the Groom. Does that make this a Chilly-pa-looza? 
His parents bring two GINORMOUS families.They ALL came to the wedding. For real. There could have been entire zip codes left unpopulated for a couple of days. Trust me, I had the list. 
I'm pretty sure there was a representative of every single twig on his family tree. And their friends. 
They came together to eat, drink and be merry. And then, when that session was over, they retired to their hotels and ate, drank and made merry some more.
Then they got up and did it all again. Four days - that's stamina. I meant to say devotion, but what's one without the other? 
With the first party back in May, we realized that Chilly's family-and-friends-extravaganza moves in a large ever evolving group . . .. . . whatever the party.
Much like a big flock of birds that lands in the yard and on every branch of every tree, fluttering and chattering away. At some unspoken signal, they all leave together, with great flourish. Whatever they do, they do it en masse.
It would be sad if all families do is eat and drink. They do way more than that.
They take pictures, and they pose for pictures. And I think they took pictures of themselves taking pictures.
Or maybe I did that. Note to readers: I know I'm not a photographer. But I bet you're looking for yourself, blurry or not. Just saying.
These families are world class laughers. I never wondered if they were laughing AT somebody (like me), they were laughing together.
With absolute, unqualified joy. Joy in the morning, as it were.
There is no shortage of hugging, which is an awesome way to greet someone you haven't seen in a while.
Or to greet someone you saw about an hour ago.
Either way, hugs are in order. Unless someone hugs you with a full drink in hand, and then that drink is spilled down the back of your shirt. But it happened only maybe once. But still.
Indeed, these celebrating families and friends love to talk, even to people they may not know. They aren't at all shy about sharing the love. 
As a group, they'll pretty much engage anyone who happens by. In Chilly's family, I'm not sure whether or not they all know who is part of whose family or not part of the family or the Lovely Bride's family, or even maybe is a delivery person or a passer-by. 
They roll with it. Or watch it unfold before their very eyes.
No shortage of tears - tears of glorious delight. When the celebratory pitch gets that high, some tears usually squeeze out. Or flow freely, take your pick.
Thus unfolds the story.
It's a glorious love story, built on the shoulders of so many stories of love and devotion. 
It's the story of one-true-Savior love.
A story of authentic brother-love and sister-love.
Devoted-parents love. 
Delighted - grandparent love. Glorious!
Aunts-uncles-cousins-love abounding.
They came together to eat, drink and be merry. And then, when that session was over, they retired to their hotels and ate, drank and made merry some more. Then they got up and did it all again. Four days - that's stamina. I meant to say devotion, but what's one without the other? With the first party back in May, we realized that Chilly's family-and-friends-extravaganza moves in a large ever evolving group . . .. . . whatever the party. Much like a big flock of birds that lands in the yard and on every branch of every tree, fluttering and chattering away. At some unspoken signal, they all leave together, with great flourish. Whatever they do, they do it en masse.It would be sad if all families do is eat and drink. They do way more than that. They take pictures, and they pose for pictures. And I think they took pictures of themselves taking pictures. Or maybe I did that. Note to readers: I know I'm not a photographer. But I bet you're looking for yourself, blurry or not. Just saying.These families are world class laughers. I never wondered if they were laughing AT somebody (like me), they were laughing together. With absolute, unqualified joy. Joy in the morning, as it were. There is no shortage of hugging, which is an awesome way to greet someone you haven't seen in a while. Or to greet someone you saw about an hour ago. Either way, hugs are in order. Unless someone hugs you with a full drink in hand, and then that drink is spilled down the back of your shirt. But it happened only maybe once. But still. Indeed, these celebrating families and friends love to talk, even to people they may not know. They aren't at all shy about sharing the love. As a group, they'll pretty much engage anyone who happens by. In Chilly's family, I'm not sure whether or not they all know who is part of whose family or not part of the family or the Lovely Bride's family, or even maybe is a delivery person or a passer-by. They roll with it. Or watch it unfold before their very eyes. No shortage of tears - tears of glorious delight. When the celebratory pitch gets that high, some tears usually squeeze out. Or flow freely, take your pick.Thus unfolds the story.It's a glorious love story, built on the shoulders of so many stories of love and devotion. It's the story of one-true-Savior love. A story of authentic brother-love and sister-love. Devoted-parents love. Delighted - grandparent love. Glorious! Aunts-uncles-cousins-love abounding.Generations of giggling-cousins love.
Friends-as-close-as-family love. 
Neighbors-with-no-fences love.
Friends-as-close-as-family love. Neighbors-with-no-fences love.My favorite philosopher, Sex and the City sage Carrie Bradshaw sums it up when she calls it "Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love."
Chilly and his Lovely Bride have that stuff. 
What a love story we celebrated, and their GINORMOUS families along with them.
Chilly and his Lovely Bride have that stuff. What a love story we celebrated, and their GINORMOUS families along with them.
2 comments:
Love the pictures...love the love story!
prettiest wedding EVER!
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