Wedding fun

A lot of people seem to be getting married lately.  Earlier this evening it was the turn of my friends Alexia and Mike.  Alexia's one of my dance students, and Mike used to be the roommate of another of my dance students, which seems to be enough of a connection for Mike to give me some sort of indirect credit for their meeting and thus their current and future happiness.  This is the third couple in the last few years that's claimed they met through my dance stuff.  Can I figure out a way to use this in advertising?

The men were in kilts; yum.  Alexia was in Vera Wang, a beautiful and unusual dress of ivory and taupe jacquard stripes.  The bodice was strapless and the skirt very bouffant, with stripes of the jacquard and ruched spirals of a different version of the jacquard with little stripes on it decorating the front and back of the skirt.  The bridesmaids were in pale lavender dresses with a general similarity in style (sleeveless, mid-calf length) but individually chosen patterns and thus variation in the details.  Nice approach.

I ended up wearing the default cocktail dress.  (I really only have one, since I have few occasions to wear short dresses.  My life involves many more balls than cocktail parties.)  I left my hair loose and pulled it back with rhinestone combs.  The one on the left stayed in perfectly while the one on the right kept escaping; why?  I couldn't find a pair of plain fishnets when I was packing so I wore patterned fishnets and, of course, dance shoes, since dancing had been promised at the reception.  That doesn't always mean much by my standards of dancing at a non-dance-community wedding, but hope springs eternal.  My optimism was rewarded by the presence at the wedding of another pair of my dance students (the groom's former roommate and his girlfriend, who was one of the bridesmaids) and a male friend whom I know from early (Renaissance and Regency) dance but who, happily, also seems to have some ballroom background and also wasn't there with anyone.

The vows included beautiful and amusing personal statements that made many of us in the audience crack up (the Hapsburg jaw!  Alexia being missing!)  The ceremony was held at the bride's grandmother's apartment in New York City.  The bride's cat attended (in a cat carrier), but skipped the reception in favor of being returned to their apartment by one of the attendees.

Following the ceremony, they took us to the reception at a different site via chartered bus.  This felt like going to camp, which meant (at least to the irreverent crowd of the couple's friends) that we needed to sing camp songs.  So while the older relatives and friends of the parents sat in bemusement, we sang bits of "The Wheels on the Bus" (the driver honked obligingly on cue) and then tried to find a Broadway love song that all of us knew.  It turns out that our immediate cluster of people all knew many B'way soundtracks but no two people knew the same ones.  Fortunately we arrived at the reception before anyone thought of "Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall."

Once we got there, we had homework to do before dinner: little guest-book pages to fill out with short answer questions and two required drawings.  We compared our limited artistic talents and tried to think of profound yet original things to say to questions like what our wishes were for the happy couple.  Fortunately sea scallops and miniature pigs-in-blankets and other fortifying treats arrived at regular intervals.

Reception dinner: filet mignon, arranged with four of what I would call French fries (but were actually billed as something classier-sounding) emerging from underneath it in a way which made it look like something out of Lovecraft.  On the side, a small spinach flan which looked like a green cupcake.  Both were exquisite.  Miniature desserts afterwards: teeny-tiny cupcakes and bite-size ice-cream cones.  Major cute!

The napkins were tied with black ribbons.  Some people immediately appropriated them as hair decorations.  My thought: there is a quick-and-dirty tie one can do with about that length of ribbon.  I found I could remember it on the fly.  It looked very decorative on my wrist.  Was outdone in the department of dubious things to do at a reception dinner table by the personal trainer and the vet student getting into a debate over exactly where on a cow filet mignon comes from and pointing out possibilities on her anatomy.  Alexia and Mike have excellent taste in friends.

The wedding planner: efficient but unobtrusive and fairly easygoing.  The cake: red velvet.  Cutting it and feeding it to each other involved so much hamming it up (should the cake be approached as if it were a fencing opponent or is this more like a beheading?) that the bride and groom completely overlooked the glasses of champagne they were supposed to hold for each other to drink from.  Bouquet-tossing: if it happened, I missed it.  Music: excellent cover band doing all the songs you'd expect.  Grand exit: not really.  They partied all the way to the end then we waved them farewell as they were driven off.  No showers of rice or birdseed or anything else, thankfully.

The Jammix approach to dancing at a reception:  East coast swing and jive (the ballroom version of the former) to as many things as possible because that's what my friend could lead.  Charleston (1920s) to "Rock this town."  Spontaneous group Highland fling (under another name, but that's what it felt like to me) to "Proud Mary."  Two-step and 1910s foxtrot to everything else.  I also did an off-the-cuff Country Bumpkin (1810s) with the bride and seven other friends after the band stopped playing.

I changed shoes in a cab on my way to the PATH station after the wedding.  Things one should not find on the floor of a cab: gum.  Do you know how hard it is to detach gum when it has become one with a fishnet stocking?

The next wedding is in Richmond in June.  My dancing friend will be there, and the bride at least is a dancer, so we expect more dance fun at that reception too.

Tomorrow (well, later today): ushering for a musical about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Addendum, 5/3/10: I finally opened the little box with the wedding party favor and was amused to find a gift with the same name as a 16th-century Italian dance.

Comments

[Marilee J. Layman]

Sounds like you had a lot of fun, except for the gum! I wonder if the cat really wanted to be there?

[Serge]

This is the third couple in the last few years that's claimed they met through my dance stuff. Can I figure out a way to use this in advertising?

"Come to Madame Suzanne's Classes for Danse and for Romance!"

Our own wedding consisted of a handful of SF fans, after which we all drove back to our appartment for cheese & crackers, followed by the watching of "Forbidden Planet".

[Susan de Guardiola]

I just put this in as an addendum, but since no one probably rechecks the original post: I finally opened the little party favor box and it turns out to be a gift with the same name as a 16thc Italian dance. I find this very amusing.

[Serge]

I guess someone came across this and thought "Ahah... I bet Susan would like that".

[Ginger]

Trivia that the vet student will probably find eventually: filet mignon comes from the spinal epaxial muscles.

[Serge]

Ginger... As usual, the French description sounds sexier. Then again, pretty much everything sounds sexier in French. I know, it's a curse I must live with every yof my life.

[Serge]

Dra. Not "...every yof my life..." but "...every day of my life..."

[Susan de Guardiola]

Yeah, "I had some lovely spinal epaxial muscle for dinner" just doesn't have the same ring to it. I'll pass this along to the vet student.

[Alexia]

Hi Susan. I'm glad you had fun. We were hamming it up because we had no idea what we were supposed to do. We were totally flummoxed and stalling for time. I think we were vaguely aware that we would have to cut a cake and were expected to do something, but we never really planned that far. Oh well, we didn't want a stiff and formal wedding anyway. Plus the cake was delicious. My parents forgot to freeze the top tier over the weekend so we're eating it bit by bit from our refrigerator. So glad you could com

[Ginger]

I find filet mignon quite delicious..but if you don't want to know which parts of the body is being served, don't ask me at dinner. Wait until afterwards. Us veterinarians are prone to blathering on and on about subjects that the rest of the world finds icky. ;-)

[Susan de Guardiola]

Alexia,
Don't worry, everyone thought it was adorable! And your wedding definitely was not stiff.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Ginger:
I used to work in Pathology. Veterinarians probably don't have much on pathologists as far as gross-out conversation.

[Ginger]

Ha, yes -- pathologists, nurses, EMTs and veterinarians are all interesting conversationalists. My speciality used to be heavily dominated by pathology, and I've had lots of good discussions -- but veterinarians have a slight advantage: our patients, while still alive, are sometimes trying to eat us.

A good friend of mine is an OB-GYN, and I won our little contest to see who was grosser. Even seeing a human cadaver didn't bother me, but my story of palpating cow ovaries was enough for her.