Event brings nothing but smiles

“So,” a friend asked, “how was the wedding?”
Or was it a family reunion?
Or was it, as one participant wondered aloud, simply a festival of babies?
Truth is, it was a little of all three.
And all three were wonderful.
Our youngest daughter, Sally, was wed to Ben Lawson of Bloomington on June 21 at the Fountain Square Ballroom, overlooking the courthouse square in Bloomington.
That’s a simple sentence, but as any bride’s parents know, the event was far from simple.
Every wedding involves roughly six zillion decisions, and this one was no exception.
Most of those fell to the couple — Sally’s in her second year as a law fellow at Indiana University, working as a lawyer for the general counsel’s office, and Ben teaches middle school social studies at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic School — but some landed in Portland.
Connie created the table decorations, while I produced the printed program for the wedding, along with a trivia test about the bride and groom. Together, we hauled all of that stuff — and the dress, mustn’t forget the dress — down to Bloomington the night before the wedding.
Friday night was the rehearsal dinner, except that we had missed the rehearsal and really didn’t have a clue as to what we were supposed to do. But the dinner was great, with the couples’ friends and family attending in large numbers.
Ben’s mother, Ann, had created a wedding memento: A map of Indiana, with a heart where Bloomington is located. Every guest at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding was urged to put their thumbprint and name on the map, preferably in that part of the state they thought of as home. Very cool.
But the best part was family.
My brother Steve and his wife Beth had driven down from Minnesota. My sister Louise had driven over from Richmond. My sister Linda and her husband Stephen and their daughter Susan and Susan’s husband Richard and their daughter Lillian had driven up from North Carolina. Nephew Ron and his wife had flown in from California.
Connie’s brother David and his wife and son had flown in from Arizona. Her sister Barbara and our niece Myra had come in from New York. Her brother Charley had arrived with Connie’s 97-year-old aunt from Illinois.
And more.
You get the picture: Family everywhere.
And the babies were the best part.
Our daughters Emily and Maggie had flown in from Boston with their husbands and our three grandchildren, Emily’s Julian and Gabriel and Maggie’s Johanna.
Along with our niece’s daughter Lillian, they stole the show.
The day after the wedding came the family reunion. We’d reserved a shelter at a Bloomington city park and had a cookout/picnic Sunday afternoon.
So the question comes up, “How was the wedding?”
If you ask that, don’t be surprised if I just smile like an idiot in response.[[In-content Ad]]