The first wedding photos.....

My friend Rick (who married his partner of 34 years on June 17th) brought his camera to the wedding and just sent these to me in my email. I took one look and sorta 'blissed out'.

( behind the cut a few big-assed photos of My Big Fat Quaker Wedding )

I'll post a few more as I get them. I don't expect to see most of them until we meet with the photographer after we get back from Yearly Meeting in early August.

Kismet or serendipity?

Two things that happened with our wedding that seemed superbly timed.

Five years ago, a nurse I had known for nearly 20 years retired. May was originally from Hawai'i and had fallen in love with orchids as a girl. She raised them here in the area and occasionally gave them away as gifts when she was subdividing specimens. I was a lucky recipient of one when she retired.

As I think many of you know, I am not an adept gardener. If a plant survives around me, its only because it thrives on benign neglect. This particular orchid has sat in a pot on our deck for five years doing essentially nothing. Two weeks ago it sent up its first flower spike in all that time, and just in time for our wedding day, presented us with 8 mauve orchids. Congratulations from a house plant?




The other oddity was on our marriage certificate. There's a tradition at a Quaker wedding under the care of a Meeting, to have a Marriage Minute that everyone in attendance signs at the end of the service. Since we were getting married after the manner of Friends, but not under the care of either of our Meetings, I had debated whether this would be appropriate or not. After seasoning it with both my husband (a member of Oversight at his Meeting), Ruth (our officiant and a member of Oversight at her Meeting), I decided to go ahead with it. I used the wording used by Northern YM (as my Faith and Practice was not handy and Northern YM had theirs available on-line) and re-worked it a bit to fit our needs. I then emailed it to my husband who tinkered with it a bit further, then sent it back to me.

Now I'd already done a mock-up of the document, not just the wording, so when I got his revision on the verbiage, I did a cut and paste or at least thought it did. It turned out to be a paste only, leaving both the original wording, as well as the revised. I didn't catch it until Kinko's had done the blow up onto my 19" by 25" parchment. Good thing I had another large sheet of parchment.

I re-booted my computer, pulled out the two semi-repetitive lines, and just before saving the document, took out 6 signature slots. I wasn't sure why I felt called to pull those slots off. In some way the document just didn't look 'right' until I did. I counted the slots after the final blow up was done onto my remaining parchment, I had 52 slots left, six less than the number confirmed for the wedding.

Oh well. Better too few slots than too many. I figured people could sign below the dotted lines. However, after it was signed, every slot was filled. The number was just enough for every person there, not one more or one less.

A number of folks called in regrets right after the wedding. One friend's mother had gotten sick the night before and they'd spent the night in the ER. Another friend came without her husband, who was with their son; the boy had broken his arm the night before (that was the cast I wound up putting on yesterday.) Two more who were on their way from the city, simply got lost.

I hope someone got a photo of the marriage certificate after it was signed.