A Wedding

Dave's niece made our wedding cake.

The wedding was September 13th.   A Friday.  Yup, Friday the 13th.
But as my good friend, Eva, told me, "NEVER be afraid of the number 13!   One plus three equals four and four is the most stable number in the Universe; 4 legs to a table or chair, 4 compass directions of our earth."
I liked her reasoning ... and the fact that she was one of a few people who didn't make a negative comment about this date.

Besides, it's my sisters birthday and she has had several Friday birthdays in her life time and she's not an unlucky person at all!

Though, it did rain.  Poured actually!

For those of you who don't know Dave, he's a very accomplished outdoors man.  He has the ability to make everyone camping with him comfortable at the campsite, so the boy is fabulous at putting up a good tarp.  He is known in his circle as "the tarp master".

So, with the help from his brother, Steve,  Dave put a tarp over the deck where we were to be married and we had white umbrellas for those who couldn't fit under the tarp.  It was actually pretty sweet.  And quite honestly, Dave and I never really noticed the rain.  Our reception was to be the next day.  With, possibly, 200 people attending.   I felt that if it had to rain it was far better that it happen on the wedding day and not on our party day.  And it was beautiful on Saturday September 14th.  Thank heavens!

Dave and I had agreed we didn't need the traditional maid of honor or best man.  We just wanted the ceremony to be us, our friend (who is a minister), Bill Gregory, and witnessed by our families.   But, between the two of us we have five grandnieces,  so we decided to have five flower girls!  I spoke with the families about our wishes and everyone agreed that this would be wonderful.  The girls could wear whatever was their favorite dresses, there was no color theme.  My oldest grandniece, Linnea, wore her "flower girl" dress to the family Easter gathering last April and let it be known that this wonderful white, full-skirted-satin-sash dress was her flower girl dress.  It was sweet and I was surprised that she was already considering her role for the wedding five months away!

Linnea is Jerry Sanders granddaughter, and at Easter Jerry was very ill with the cancer that would consume him within a very short month.  Linnea understood all that was going on and told her mother she understood about cancer and death because of Uncle Jim.

Last May, when Jerry passed, friends and family gathered for the weekend for making dinners, being present and participating in the grieving process with the Sanders.  It was a time with lots of tears, laughter, sharing good food, singing and dancing and honoring the loss of the wonderful energy and spirit that was Jerry Sanders, or, Bee Bah, to his grandchildren.

Linnea had been gifted with one of Jerry's favorite caps that he had brought back from Alaska.  Every so often she would take the cap off and, with tears in her eyes, offer any of us to "smell it, it smells like Bee Bah."  I did this with Jim's hats too, quite honestly, it seemed to be the only clothing that had maintained any sense of his smell, so I totally  understood what Linnea was doing.

It was one of these evenings that Linnea called me over and said, "Aunt Mary, what do you think of my being a bridesmaid instead of a flower girl?"

"Wow! Linnea, talk to me about this."  She looked up at me and from under the brim of that cap and said, "Well, I've been a flower girl a couple times already but I've never been a bridesmaid." Then she sat back, waiting for my reply!

Linnea

Here we are mourning the man who,  for this little girl, the sun rose and set on and yet she was thinking about this upcoming wedding.  I realized that if this was something she could look forward to, be excited about and perhaps help in some tiny way to get through this difficult time .. then of course she could be my bridesmaid!  When I told her, "yes, I would be delighted to have you as my one-and-only bridesmaid" she leaped up and ran over to her mother to tell her my answer was yes!

So,  we had four flower girls who danced and bounced out ahead, throwing flowers ... over the railing into the water, at each other, or just up into the air.  And I had one bridesmaid, who stood 4 feet tall, wore white, looked absolutely adorable,  held my bouquet for me, and was very grown up.

It is one of the many cherished memories from this weekend long celebration when Dave and I united our families as well as our large circle of friends.

Loving you all back,
Mary

PS ... we also sang Happy Birthday to my sister, Jayne.