"Love at first sight is easy to understand; it’s when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle."
— Amy Bloom
Our dear friend MGH paraphrased this quote when she officiated at our wedding ceremony. After 17 years together, we find it exciting to be legally wed at last. My wife (I love writing that!) and I are on vacation now, taking what we have come to call our North American Bridal Tour. It started when our dear friends Les Gals recast a planned outing one week after the wedding into a champagne tea at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco. We donned our wedding outfits and Jan made sweet wedding favors with pink and white Jordan almonds. The tea was fabulous, and afterwards we posed for a group photo in the lobby and talked about Photoshopping them into the wedding photos.
Next stop on the tour was Chicago for dinner with family and a night at the Ardmore House B&B. Then off to Mishawaka to see Mom, my sister E and niece H. We modeled our wedding outfits for them, showed the wedding ceremony video, and took a family picture, pondering the best poses for Photoshopping them in. Back to Chicago for another family dinner, and then to Aunt P's apartment. Again we donned our wedding finery and showed the video, took more family photos, and dug into a two-tier "wedding cake" that my sister F and niece G constructed from a cheesecake and a decadent chocolate affair from Whole Foods.
Now we're in Halifax for K's family reunion. We're planning to do it again (outfits, video, photo), probably before Saturday's barbecue. I'm hoping everyone will participate but won't be surprised (disappointed, yes, but not surprised) if not everyone does. I've been accepted into the family (it's been 17 years now, after all) but there are some religious beliefs that still present barriers. But I hope everyone will come. I still love hearing the ceremony, to which MGH had also added this powerful quote from the civil rights movement:
"The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which "the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one's skin or color or race" are minor indeed. Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs."
— Hannah Arendt in Dissent, Winter 1959
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