Back from the Wedding, Part II

So we got to the wedding pre-wedding dinner in the home of Marty, the groom (who, incidentally, I'd never met); he and the bride were not there -- presumably they were at the wedding rehearsal. Several of my in-laws (yes, for simplicity's sake I'll still call them that... more than simplicity, actually, wee below) and Marty's family. Marty wasn't the reproductive prodigy that Erin's mom had been (Erin and I are both the last of 8), but they all came with husbands, wives and kids. Slow and steady wins the genetic race, I guess.

Fortunately, Kate (one of Marty's) had printed out name labels, red for Darlene's side, blue for Marty's. Being a smart-ass, I immediately appropriated the one for my niece Caitlin and spent the rest of the evening as "Darlene's Favorite Granddaughter" (They were all "Marty's Favorite This" or "Darlene's Favorite That." In retrospect, I should have stayed "Darlene's Favorite Son-In-Law," as that was probably the only distinction of which there was only one).

It wasn't fortunate for me, because I didn't actually read anyone else's. For one thing, the women I didn't already know had a tendency to put them on their chests, and as the type was fairly tiny, I felt a little self-conscious about staring close and long enough to read them.

This leads me to my first realization. YMMV, but I found that, for me, just because you no longer think of the person you married as your wife, doesn't mean you don't still think of the family you married into as your in-laws. Yes, they are still the same people they were to me before, all the siblings and their spouses, all the nieces and nephews. Now, this actually doesn't mean much. Erin being the last of 8 with a good distance between him and 7 means that there's a wide age-bubble around me. Just about everyone was 40+ or 20-.

The food was mountainous. The kind of thing where the people responsible would afterward say "What are we gonna do with all this?" -- and they did, I was there for it). I went back to find tables of her family, and tables of his family; the only one regularly crossing the line was Grace, my 5-year-old, who was holding a table of Marty's teen-aged grandchildren spellbound with tales of her life ("I don't know how I'm ever going to get registered for school, since we keep getting there late..." Another blog, that).

Darlene and Marty ("Dar-Mar", as they'd become known) eventually showed up. Grace was very eager to meet her new grandpa, and presented him with a handful of dandelions she'd gathered on our way to the house. "I figured, since I'm a flowergirl, I might as well start now." she explained. By the end of the night, Marty was pretty impressed with Grace. I don't think he was prepared for her level of precocity. Most people aren't...

The evening went well. I unthinkingly left Erin in charge of the kids for the first hour or so, and I felt bad about that -- Eve was particularly difficult as, unused to the suburbs, she had a penchant for invading the neighbors' yards if not constantly watched. So I made a special point to be co-parent for the rest of the trip.

Well, mostly. I screwed up the morning of the wedding. See, the wedding coincided with the weekend of the Bayberry Community Garage Sale -- and annual event wherein the entire neighborhood has its yard/garage/rummage sales simultaneously. It's equivalent to the spawning of the grunion; hordes of garage-sailors clog the roads, looking for $40 couches, 25-cent travel mugs, $1 CDs, etc. And I love it. I was itching to get out there and look for homeschooling supplies. Maybe I could pick up some microscope slides! Ooh!

So, when Eve passed out for a nap, I moseyed over to the church sale -- only just across the street! Well, then I realized that most of the sale was in the parking lot behind the church... I wandered that... found nothing... back at the front, I was about to buy that 25-cent travel mug when Erin yelled my name from across the street.

Yeah, I flubbed up. See, I thought we were leaving at 1:30. Turns out, the wedding was across town and we were leaving at 1. It was 1. Erin had gotten home, Eve was not dressed, and no one knew where I was. Oh, yeah, I hadn't told anyone. Well, I was just going across the street, right? Of course, after the parking lot detour, I was gone a half-hour. Eek.

So Erin was pissed. Rightfully so. Well, I finally conveyed enough understanding of the gravity of my carelessness, and made damn sure the rest of the evening I was on top of things. For the rest of the evening, we were a parenting commando squad -- switching off to give one another breaks to eat, drink, socialize. People noticed how well we worked together.

In fact, they noticed so much that I think they started to forget we're not married anymore. At one point my brother-in-law looked at the inflatable mattress set up for Erin and the girls and asked casually, "So, who's this fr,t he whole family?" Erin answered, a little awkwardly, "Well... me and the kids."

(In another fun moment, at Mass the day after the wedding, Marty introduced us to someone as "Darlene's daughter Erin, and her daughter Eve, and her daughter Grace... and this is Sean, Erin's husband!" I smiled, and muttered, "Something like that, anyway.")

The wedding itself was mostly fun. Erin, after much agonizing and dread over what to wear, had settled on a pale green shirt, less-pale tie, and dark green jacket. It looked great; in fact, I'm going to want to borrow the tie next time I have reason to wear one. No one made any disturbing comments, though one person did seem to stare a bit.

The ceremony was odd. For one thing, the place was a bizarre cross between wedding chapel and funeral parlor; I realized soon after saying that that it probably was, in fact, used for both those purposed. For another thing, the wedding song was "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee" -- set, as usual, to Beethoven's "Ode de Joye." It was the first time I'd ever heard someone manage to make Beethoven sound rinky-tink. I can't describe it, other than to say I had to fight the urge to bounce my hands back and forth with the music.

I also realized during the ceremony that there were far fewer people than I'd expected. I mentioned this to Erin and was told that the 400 figure had been exaggeration, intended as irony; "They've only invited immediate family and there are still like 400 people." I chastized Erin for this, of course -- when dealing with someone who takes things literally as often as I do, one should never do that sort of thing.