Wedding

On the way to a wedding, I saw this "Love Birds" bus. I hope this was not the honeymoon getaway vehicle.

Tahira was lovely (as always) and simply radiant; there was hardly a dry eye in the audience.

Jim chose the texts for the ceremony. The selection from the Song of Solomon was particularly well-presented (and somewhat mischievous).

I'm not sure who chose the music - Swan praised the choices but denied any involvement in the selection. Then again, he seemed to think the wedding ceremony was a BYOV affair. (Get your mind out of the gutter, V stands for violin.) During the Hayden duet, Holde Gattin!, I was trying to practice my German, but to no avail - I was only able to pick out words such as "Freude" (joy) and "Augenblick" (moment), which might not really be the keys to the song.

Rev. Rock officiated; one nice touch was to encourage everyone to recite the Lord's Prayer together in whatever form was most comfortable to them. I'm a "trespasser" at heart, even though I've trained myself to say "debtor", so it was nice to be in a room full of trespassers. The sermon focused on wine - alas, another thing I miss from my childhood church - which provided some natural, fruitful metaphors about blending and maturing and so forth. (He didn't mention grafting ourselves into Jesus's vine or putting new wine into old wineskins, but that's probably just as well for the purpose.) Wine was also, of course, a good segue into the reception.

Despite the excellent transition, we did need to give the happy couple some time to pose for photos etc. and make their way to the Essex House. Cheryl (henceforth to be known as "the Mastermind") suggested getting our nails done. Very cool. We took the opportunity to nail down our positions on important topics such as what would we do if we ran away and joined the circus.

The reception was lovely, although there was bit of an issue with the paparazzi at first:


Jim's speech at the reception had its humorous moments in keeping with his public persona - he built suspense by telling us the second thing he noticed about Tahira first - but also revealed some of the depth and warmth of his feelings for Tahira (not exactly a secret, naturally, but I think it was a big deal to put into words in front of a crowd). Tahira's brother James gave the couple, and particularly his sister, a really moving tribute.

There was also plenty of dancing and good company, with lots of photogenic FOCUS folks (photos on facebook).