Liz's Wedding

Liz at cocktail party

Cousins

  My niece Liz was married to  last weekend at a winery outside of Charlottesville, Virginia.  I had a glorious time.  On Friday night my sons took me out to dinner at  a restaurant that served fine Southern food (no longer an oxymoron in my book.)  We went from there to a cocktail party where we met the bridegroom's family.   The Justus clan is large and welcoming and happy with each other.   They do interesting work.   Luke's father works with  a non-profit that runs a medical school in Tanzania.  His uncle is a minister who participates in the Moral Monday protests in North Carolina.

Before the wedding

Simone

More cousins

      On Saturday we hung out in the large suite my sister Florrie had in the hotel where we all stayed.  Most of my family was there, except for Judy, who couldn't make the trip.   We talked and laughed and ate cookies.  The little girls colored and talked about their roles in the wedding.   Maxine and Lucy took their jobs as greeter seriously.  Jamie worried that, as flower girl, she had to walk up the aisle with the two-year-old ring bearer, and what if he wandered off?  My cousin Deke brought old photos of our grandparents.  Florrie read a love letter that my our father had written to our mother three weeks before their wedding.  Some swam, or worked out, or went running.  John led the kids on a frog hunt at a nearby creek.  Meanwhile, the bridal party was out at the winery an the grooms' party went skeet shooting.
     We took three chartered buses for the 45-minute drive  to the winery.  It was raining, so the ceremony was held indoors, in a lovely room draped in white. Two of the nine bridesmaids sobbed throughout the ceremony.  The minister quoted Amos ("Do  justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God") as one one of the couple's guiding sayings.  The string quartet played My Girl as the recessional.    Then the toasts and the dancing began.

Bridegroom Luke (r) skeet shooting

   While dinner was being served, Maxine had the large dance floor to herself for ballet.  The groom's brother could not get through his toast without tears.   Abby, the maid of honor, told about being a scared in the night and racing across the hall and leaping into Liz's bed, wedging herself between her sleeping big sister and the wall.  This went on so often that Liz threatened to put a dead bolt on the door.  "Why would she put a dead bull on the door?"  asked Jamie later.

Maxine and Lucy

Mother and sister of the bride

    We danced and danced.  The rain stopped and the full moon shone over the Blue Ridge.   We lined up in two rows out on the lawn, holding large sparklers.  Liz and Luke ran out between the rows of sputters and sparkles.   Then we got back on the buses.  My sisters and I were in the front of one bus, and Luke's college friends filled the back.  They sang all the way home, starting with fraternity chants and ending with the Star Spangled Banner.  We laughed with happiness.    As we rode through the countryside in the bright moonlight, I thought about how fine it is to enlarge one family with another family.

Happy vows