What's wrong with this picture?
The wedding invitation
came with a very polite request:
No mention of bare arms...
But I should have brought a jacket, at least. A shawl, a scarf. All the women on the bride's side were covered head to toe, like "Little House on the Prairie" era, which nobody had warned me to expect. I would have tried harder to acquire such attire, had I realized it's a sign of respect inside a church, not a dress code someone hopes to impose on her guests. On the groom's side, all the women at least kept their knees and throat covered. Except for me. My dress did cover my knees - until I sat down. -_- (I am such an idiot.)
This was my cue,
a photo from the "Betrothal" ceremony (preceding the wedding by half a year), but I had never met the bride or her family or their fellow parishioners, and I hadn't read the Tourist Guide to Dressing for The Vatican: no bare arms or bare legs. Oops. Ignorance is not bliss.
I meant no disrespect, but I didn't try hard enough
to shop for something modest - I don't shop much and I have trouble finding anything that fits at all, much less that I don't look like a baked potato or a blanc mange (puff pudding) in.
Little did I realize how much I would love this bride, her sisters, her family. She radiates joy, love, serenity, kindness, compassion.
I imagined prim and proper, stuffy and conservative, but these are the warmest, most educated and cosmopolitan people anywhere, never mind that they live in the rural "middle of nowhere" Midwest. Her dad has several patents; their customers range from USA's prairie states to Africa, Russia and the Ukraine; these are the most accomplished and yet the most humble and down-to-earth people you'll find anywhere.
And I love them!
This bride is so warm and welcoming. She has that rare quality Jackie Kennedy (First Lady of "Camelot") was known for: making every person feel liked, appreciated, and not JUDGED, but accepted as-you-are.
The dead were remembered
at a special table of photographs, and how many people do that at a wedding? The groom's grandparents, and their only daughter (who died at age four of leukemia) were so beautifully memorialized along with the bride's side:
At the next wedding (only two weeks later, another nephew of my husband's), I apologized to this woman for my inappropriate attire at her wedding. She laughed and dismissed the subject and we ended up talking about international politics, philosophy, literature, the meaning of life, and so much more.
And cool stories about her family. My favorite:
When her great-grandmother was a baby in a cradle, a family friend, age 18, commented on how beautiful she was. The mother joked, "She will be your wife someday." Who took her seriously? And yet the man waited, and waited. The baby girl reached age twenty. He married her.
It sounds like a scene in one of the Twilight books (Bella's baby and the - No Spoiler Here).
This strong, smart, supremely capable woman waited 37 years for her wedding day. No bride could be more beautiful than her. I love her like a sister, like a role model (yes, I'm old enough to be her mother), a beautiful soul who attracts everyone into her orbit and shuns no one.
She is sublime.
And I dressed inappropriately for her wedding. There is no atoning for a deed that's been done, but she is 100% forgiving, which I cannot say of most people I know.
May they be fruitful and multiply
Stealing from @wonderwop,
If you've never written a Freewrite before, please visit today's post by @mariannewest
@mariannewest/day-731-5-minute-freewrite-monday-prompt-inappropriately-dressed
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