Juxtapose

Okay, so, I'm home from the wedding for a few hours and I'm all prepped to write some epistle on how beautiful it was (and it *was* beautiful) and the lacy bows and the gorgeous Christine who looked more svelte, leggy, nervous, and lovely than anyone, least of all me, who has run around in camoflage with her during Capture The Flag games in times past, could have ever imagined her. But, hey, I knew she was beautiful all along anyways, so it wasn't a surprise.

And when the "you may kiss.." pronouncement came, there was Nick, right on the ball, his right hand over her left ear and his fingers in her hair, pulling her face towards his for the shortest and sweetest kiss I have ever spent a whole wedding crying about. A whole day, bawling like a baby.

Then, after crying came food. I ate baklava, salad, turkey, syrian bread in oil (yum), and baklava, among other things, and I hung around with Stine's cousins and next-in-line sister, Karen, who I think will be having a tough upcoming week, what with her older sister getting married and not being a bunk above her in their room every night. We talked, ate cake, and then I took a bajillion pictures, gave almost everyone on the bride's side of the guestlist hugs and kisses on the cheek, and kept running up to Christine and telling her how beautiful she looked and giving her more kisses on the cheek, because that's what I do at events like these - moral support. You bring the food, I bring the Mediterranean cheek-kissing. After more of that, and more of picture-taking of everyone (I would have been loathe, if I were poor Stine, of stopping so many millions of times in one day to pose), the remaining partiers went outside and decorated Nick's red Neon with streamers and miscellaneous annoying junk, to which Nick, upon seeing, denounced, "Oh, don't worry, we're stopping somewhere along the way to get rid of all this stuff!" We smiled, laughed, took more pictures. I kissed the bride and groom on ther respective cheeks once more, and, all at once, Nick picked up his 5'3" bride in his arms (quick photo op!) and placed her in the passenger seat, waving and off to a vacation home in New Hampshire for the honeymoon.

My little Christine is now a Mrs., leaving a few of us behind and moping around wondering how it could happen so soon and DANG, are we really this perpetually single? But that's beside the point, really. A non point, actually. Really, nothing mattered to me for a solid half-hour there except for the image of a lovely young couple exchanging rings symbolizing their never ending commitment until death-do-them-part and the thought that the little girl who I met while pairing up by holding hands at a fourth-grade church group activity is now no longer. She's a woman, and married, and a married woman. Times do change, don't they?

The point of this post was originally to say that I would write something about this later when I wasn't so tired and still so weepy, but we all know how that always turns out.

G'night all. Sweet dreams and happy memories.