Final Wedding Post: Nom Nom Nom

Since this is phoebeeating.com, I feel it’s important to mention that we had our food catered by Bosphorus in Denville, NJ, an awesome Turkish restaurant. It was sticks-to-your-stomach good, a necessity, I think, when one is drinking lots of mead!

And here’s me, the bride, chowing down (picture courtesy the Dad-in-Law). I don’t think I got to eat much more than this on the Big Day!

The One You May or May Not Have Been Waiting For

A day or two after I got hitched, Ms. M.B. Ferda emailed me and urged me to update. She said: “Phoebe you know that nothing is sacred and that you have to pause your wedding and post-wedding festivities to update your blog. everyone you’ve known since 5th grade is waiting.”

That’s probably true, and only a little scary. Connectivity is weird. Thanks to facebook, who knows who might be looking at this? I feel like I should send shout-outs to Inha Son, and the mothers of my elementary school friends (hi, Ellen!), and that’s not even counting all the relatives and new relatives-in-law who read this thing!

In any event, I’m not sure how we did it, but Jordan and I got married. Despite planning the whole thing in four months, and despite the fact that we were still putting up the tent about fifteen minutes before the guests arrived, it all worked, and it all worked beautifully. The day was really, terribly magical. Guests hula hooped. Much mead was consumed. People laughed and cried during our ceremony. There were impromptu high fives. I went for a (drunk) stunningly gorgeous walk with two of my stunningly gorgeous friends. Writing center people and MFA people played kings together and there were battleship battles and surprising hook-ups and it was sunny and orange and fun and just about as awesome as I could possibly imagine.

But what you guys really care about most is pictures, right? Of course. Our pictures were taken by our dear friend D’Arcey; like everyone else who contributed to our wedding (and it really did take a village), we couldn’t have done it without him. And he did an awesome job, didn’t he?

(Don’t worry, facebook folks, I’ll post these there soon, to your tagging delight, I’m sure.)

This shot typifies our general disposition during the whole thing. Giggly.

Our friends and family get off their butts and declare their support. Thanks, guys!

Our dear friend Jeff gave an amazing speech–more on this at the end of the entry.

Jordan’s comically large vows.

Our amazing shoes.

Ceremonious high-fives!

We hadn’t planned on doing the Jewish glass stomping thing, but my cousin Lisa ran up with a cup and we thought, hey, why not?

Hugs!

Me and my beautiful Mommy, who let us use her yard for the day.

Me and my beautiful Emmy, who was keeper of the tequila.

There’s some serious mead drinking going on here!

And some serious hula hooping!

John Randall was the keeper of the fire.

There was Apples to Apples.

And kings.

But most of all, there was us–the two of us, and all of us, people who love one another.

Somehow, strangely, I think it’s easy to forget that weddings are about love, about celebration. There’s so much buying, and planning, even in an offbeat wedding, so much anxiety built into the process. But I’m glad I did it. I’m glad I got to celebrate with the people who love us. It made it that much more special.

Jeff wrote a speech for the wedding. I think he wanted to keep the text secret, as if it would somehow be better captured only in memory. But I keep rereading it. It’s probably the nicest thing that’s ever been written about us. It’s magical. It sparkles. And I’m incredibly vain. So I want to share just a bit of it with you, gentle readers.

These two have created something together that could not have come from either alone–something beautiful and cosmically right (and I don’t even believe in cosmic plans). They have built something so profound that it has nearly taken on substance, and to be with them–in the presence of their love–is to sense something almost tangible.

[. . .]

Part of loving another person is the element of time–of change–and our ability to love constantly, even increasingly, as the object of our love grows and changes and surprises us, or even confounds us.

The truth is that I wish I had met Phoebe and Jordan before they’d met one another. I wish I had seen them when their dreams for one another were new. I think that watching their love take root and bloom must have been like watching the sun rise to illuminate a landscape–making its beauty more apparent, more defined, and more real with subtle, gradual, light.

Later, Phoebe wrote to me to warn me about love. She wrote: “Part of loving is dependence, which is a weakness, and relinquishing control, which is scary, too. You cannot be a rock. And rocks are cool. And you cannot be an island.” But Phoebe isn’t a rock. Jordan is not an island. Phoebe and Jordan are independent, self-sufficient, and brilliant people who are set aglow in the light of an unfathomable–and I will admit undefinable–love. They have been lucky enough to find one another and patient enough to fall in love–to let that first limerence evolve into the enduring romance we’re to celebrate today. They appreciate one another, and everything they’ve experienced together, in a transcendentally beautiful way and it is obvious that no two people are as capable of making one another happy–of finding what they are looking for in one another–as these two.

Thank you, Jeff, and everyone else, for all you did for us. Really. Can’t thank you enough.

Hot Jordan Stomp

I remember now why I was planning a wedding!

More brown and orange madness soon, gentle readers–promise.