Tuesday, September 23, 2008

wedding party



It is now Fall and cool and crisp and for no apparent reason I started thinking about weddings. I am lucky enough to have few married or engaged friends so I never go to weddings. But my few memories of weddings are lovely and severe. Every wedding I have ever been to has been held in Pennsylvania. Most every wedding reception has been held in either a fire company or grange - here is a link to what a grange is for those unfamiliar with this terminology. Many of these weddings have a happy / depressing working class Deer Hunter wedding reception vibe (the real fun starts around 3:13 or so):



These weddings generally feature a fuzzy navel fountain, which is a pretty awe-inspiring sight. I remember being very young and being forbidden from drinking fuzzy navels, listening to like Peter Gabriel or Genesis or Huey Lewis and the News or Exposé.

Just now, I was listening to some Tango in the Night-era Fleetwood Mac / late 80's Stevie Nicks and it got me thinking about weddings. Not sure where this association came from. The mind works in mysterious ways.

"Seven Wonders" (Fleetwood Mac)
"Seven Wonders" (dub remix)

Many weddings involve country line dancing, like my cousin's, two summers ago. My cousin and her husband met each other at a country line dancing bar. Their dance-based romance is inspiring.







When I was 13 or so my great-uncle got married in a gazebo on his farm. Since these family members were bluegrass lovers, the wedding processional was fiddled, and the reception featured a pig-roast. Obviously as a young adolescent I was mortified.

The most recent wedding I attended, over a year and a half ago I think, was a friend-of-friend situation. I was a designated emergency date after my friend Daniel's days-fresh breakup. Obviously my date was less than chipper due to his recent heartbreak, but I tried to make the most of it. Since the guy getting married was in a band, his amazing "wedding band" was a real band and they played super-romantic and excellent wedding songs. Everyone danced. The best was when they did "Sea of Love" I thought I was gonna cry. Also the bride / groom dance was to some Van Morrison song, I think off Tupelo Honey. It was right then that I started believing in marriage, maybe for the first time.



1 comment:

zerry ht said...

I had a nice time watching these wedding party photos. The weddings are enjoyable for guests only if the couples add some entertainment activities for them otherwise it can get boring. For our big day we have booked one of the best event venues in Los Angeles and now working on the list of entertainment and fun activities for the guests.