nonionay | (no subject)

Last night I went to the long-anticipated wedding of

coffeejunkie.

From the outside, Fenmere's was an awesome wedding. Plenty of things went wrong leading up to it, but one of Jonathan's graces is that he refuses to let anything get him down. Nevertheless, we're all grateful it's over, so that he can go back to stressing out about normal things like his comics.

The wedding theme was the 20s, so dressing up was encouraged. If I'd done more research, I might have bought a ribbon to put around my head with an ostrich plume I own, but instead put on a thick white headband, decided I looked like a stoned hippie, and with my cloak of hair I could never look like a flapper. So I just dressed nicely. Realized exactly how out-of practice I am with makeup (when I got there, CT said, "wow, I didn't recognize you with lipstick!) And put on the pointy shoes I never get to wear. (tennis shoes in the car. I'm not stupid)

Mitch showed up, looking dapper in a suit and flaming Converse. Keffy wore white and khaki. She came out of her room holding the tie which words cannot describe. "Should I wear it?" she asked kind of self-consciously. To which she received an immediate, double, "Yes."
"Fenmere wants Keffy at his wedding," I said. "And you don't get more Keffy than that tie."

It was held in the dance barn at Sudden Valley, out in woodsy no-where land at the south end of Lake Whatcom. Keffy, Mitch and I drove in circles at first, missing our turn, and ending up following a small group of people who turned to us and said, "don't follow us, we don't know where we're going!" So we ended up going in the back, coming out of the building to meet the bride and groom.

In front huddled the small group of BSers/writers I hang out with. (

reicreature,

celtic_tiger,

perfect_ashlar).

q13_exe floated about being social. Others of the Black Drop crowd came and went. We clung together like water droplets in a bucket of oil, keeping all the weirdness isolated.

At one point, Clarence, in the middle of talking to me, darted his head forward and said, "Is that opal?" We know a girl named Opal, and if she had showed up, I would have been surprised. I turned around. "Where?" But he was talking about my necklace, which is a thin piece of opal carved roughly into the shape of a guitar pick. When you see it on its own, it looks pretty boring and innocuous. I wore it because my dear old friend Ilsa made it for me, her father being a jeweler. But in the right light, apparantly, it flashes beautifully.
Keffy's tie was a huge hit.

The inside had a high wooden ceiling, with strange, monochromatic quilts hanging from the rafters. They looked like they'd been stolen from a hospital. Down lower, strings of lights twinkled and lit up the flowered archway and the beautiful glass vases filled with water and submerged lilies. Other friends showed up who I don't often get to see, or are of the "I've seen you but don't actually know your name" variety. Like

skellington1, who I've been seeing around since I was a student at Western, and see online so much it's easy to forget we've never actually interacted. I got to meet

oddmanrush's fiancee. In just under a year, they get to go through all this. I promised to be Drew's second-cousin-once-removed to help him bulk up his side of the family. Drew had some impressive arm garters made of electrical tape.

After the simple, beautiful ceremony, we stuffed ourselves on cake and homemade ginger beer, which tasted weird at first, but it rapidly grew on me. The Gallus Brothers played er... bluegrass? 20s music? Whatever it was, it was awesome and made us all want to watch O, Brother, Where Art Thou? We danced and watched adorable children. There was just the right number of people/space/noise, and the right number of people I actually know. I never really talked to the bride or groom this whole time beyond a brief hug, but that's probably just as well, since they had loads of family, and were looking a bit overwhelmed.

I discovered it's more fun to dance in painful shoes than comfy ones.

Keffy and I promised to do cleanup duty. When all was done, we took the garbage out to the dumpsters. Four dumpsters, all labeled, "Cardboard recycling only." WTF? We stuck the bags in one which had other garbage bags in it.

Then we drove in more circles (this time in the dark) before making the long and windy trek up Lake Whatcom while exchanging tales of ghost encounters with Rei and Zack.

I haven't been to many weddings. The first I was too young to appreciate. The second was a relative I didn't know, the third was that of a pregnant fellow confirmation student who I didn't actually know. The fourth was my cousin's, and that was awesome, if slightly odd because it was a big Catholic wedding at a time when I was abandoning the faith. It made me stress over what I would ultimately do for my own wedding, because church and family have been united in my mind for so long. The last wedding I went to and was actually maid of honor at, was an emotional, drama-laden affair.

This one was great, because I know the people well enough to care for them (better than my cousin even, I'm ashamed to say) and get weepy-- but no drama!