The groom wore sneakers.
The bride wore jean shorts. Where else but Woodstock would Crazy Cousin Bruce be married to Mavi by a stream and a Justice of the Peace? We drove down to the wedding from Lexington worried we were only wearing country clothes. But the only suit Bruce sported was jeans and jean jacket to my Windows of the World Bat Mitzvah. I don't think he bothered about coming to Temple. He didn't bother about Temple for his own wedding. Bruce and Mavi were married in the church of nature with trees for cathedrals and a Jewish Justice of the Peace who emmigrated to we've got Wooden hippies in stock from Brooklyn and who would have almost pleased Bruce's son of a rabbi father to know was officiating.
Bruce, 63, a confirmed bachelor who only recently gave up the pipe he'd started smoking when he was a junior at Horace Mann High School, told us two weeks ago that he was getting married to Mavi, a few decades shy of 63. Would we come? Incredulous, we accepted. It was an event more surprising in the occurance than not.
Jesse was the best man. I was the best woman. There were more cameras than guests. While I'd been expecting more of a wedding party, this made perfect sense. Bruce is a photographer. Bruce is a misanthrope. An Arnolphe, he takes fantastic pictures and more pleasure from shocking people than their presence. The wedding taking place as planned was shocking enough. Most of Mavi's family is in the Phillipines and his parents couldn't come from California. They were worried she was marrying him for his money; we were worried she wasn't. She is poet, nurse, wit. He is lucky.
So after casually signing the papers, without choreography we clumsily tripped down to the bank of the river. With socks up to his calves, a camera down around his neck, a baseball cap up on his bald head, and a bride years younger, Bruce could have been a most comic groom. Yet amidst the ceremony distinguished by lack of ceremony, with bearded Bruce occasionnally interjecting in the remarks of Justice and frowning through the Browning, when he put the ring on her finger and she on his ringfinger it was magical. Wedding, we're going to spend the rest of our however long lives together magical. Watching while they watched eachother, my family gathered closer. Their exchange of bands, symbols of unbound bonding and an official family made me happy I was a part, came from and out of one. The only other wedding I've been to was traditional Vietnamese in a Buddhist Temple and a language I don't understand. And in the middle of that ornate, old tradition, there was also the simple promise of eternity and transcendence through trying to merge into one. Eventually I am going to a normal wedding, although that's unlikely for a long time with my family. Anyways, I hope the beauty of the form forgives and holds the relatively strange content of my relations always.
Bruce, 63, a confirmed bachelor who only recently gave up the pipe he'd started smoking when he was a junior at Horace Mann High School, told us two weeks ago that he was getting married to Mavi, a few decades shy of 63. Would we come? Incredulous, we accepted. It was an event more surprising in the occurance than not.
Jesse was the best man. I was the best woman. There were more cameras than guests. While I'd been expecting more of a wedding party, this made perfect sense. Bruce is a photographer. Bruce is a misanthrope. An Arnolphe, he takes fantastic pictures and more pleasure from shocking people than their presence. The wedding taking place as planned was shocking enough. Most of Mavi's family is in the Phillipines and his parents couldn't come from California. They were worried she was marrying him for his money; we were worried she wasn't. She is poet, nurse, wit. He is lucky.
So after casually signing the papers, without choreography we clumsily tripped down to the bank of the river. With socks up to his calves, a camera down around his neck, a baseball cap up on his bald head, and a bride years younger, Bruce could have been a most comic groom. Yet amidst the ceremony distinguished by lack of ceremony, with bearded Bruce occasionnally interjecting in the remarks of Justice and frowning through the Browning, when he put the ring on her finger and she on his ringfinger it was magical. Wedding, we're going to spend the rest of our however long lives together magical. Watching while they watched eachother, my family gathered closer. Their exchange of bands, symbols of unbound bonding and an official family made me happy I was a part, came from and out of one. The only other wedding I've been to was traditional Vietnamese in a Buddhist Temple and a language I don't understand. And in the middle of that ornate, old tradition, there was also the simple promise of eternity and transcendence through trying to merge into one. Eventually I am going to a normal wedding, although that's unlikely for a long time with my family. Anyways, I hope the beauty of the form forgives and holds the relatively strange content of my relations always.
