So, Thursday May 26, I went home for a wedding.

The travelers among you can understand the compunction of “going home for a wedding” or going to a destination wedding.

Traveling for all weddings is usually a lot, but when you are constantly in a new place, missing weddings is hard and catching weddings is also hard. There are no convenient weddings.

Each wedding is a little different, they reflect the personality of the couple (and, let’s be real: especially the bride). On the flip side, each wedding-going experience is different as it is usually flavored by your relationship with the bride and groom.

When you feel obligated to a wedding you don’t want to attend, or you are going to a wedding at great cost to you:

You know the groan, the squeaking of the emotional wheels when you roll out of the driveway or off of the runway.

This was not one of those weddings (I wasn’t obligated).

This wedding was of my dear friend, former roommate and co-spy-fighting crime-spy Cate, my best friend from high school and over the years.

It was a complete blur, a crazy expensive flight, 4 days without pay, and almost 20 hours of flying. But, it was not an option in my mind.

 

I didn’t want to miss this wedding, and if you don’t want to be my friend anymore after you read this post, I will understand though I hope you continue to stick around: but I am 100% over weddings.

There was the smart, simple brown Ann Taylor Loft for Angel’s, the long blush pink Alfred Angelo for Emily’s, the strapless, ruched black for Katie’s, and the clomp of weddings I sang in, read for, and danced through (two cousins included, a third which I couldn’t attend sadly). The elephants kissed atop Becky and Graham’s cake and I walked away from several others with gifts: the coozie from Marguerite and Jorge’s, the deck of cards from Kara and Joseph, the leftover matchbooks from Kelli and Michael’s. I didn’t go to Becky and Matt’s but I see those coasters literally on almost all of my friends’ tables. I ate Moe’s nachos at Ellen and Matt’s, sent a bathroom set to Amanda and John, something else to Katie and John’s- a potholder and an apron?, I kept a handkerchief from Meredith and Kurtis’s for years. I got a teacup from Emily’s, too, and earrings from Marguerite and a monogrammed L.L. Bean tote from Meredith that I used for YEARS!

If I hadn’t started regularly attending, participating in, and celebrating my friends marriages at the neonatal age of 20, then mayhaps I wouldn’t feel this way and I’d be happy about weddings. And if I’d been in Atlanta for this one, I would have been especially excited, but I had to fly across the continent and then drive 2.5 more hours each way, in traffic and on dirt roads, to get to a far-off farm called Neverland.

I wanted to see my family, they wanted to see me, but it was hardly possible because I was in and out in a literal flash. I wanted to dig through my storage bins to find some clothes to bring back to Alaska, and I had just enough time to rifle through them and leave the detritus in a heap in my parent’s extra bedroom closet.

Not to mention, I forgot that it is hotter than Death Valley in Atlanta and my body quickly reminded me of boob sweat and lower butt sweat and inner thigh sweat and mosquitoes biting you but you don’t know until the next day when your skin is destroyed. You hardly get to see your friend, and when you do, you have to share her with the random mix of best friends that is the bridal party, who you’ve probably met a sociable handful of times. Your friend may relate to you differently because, well, she’s not used to having her whole world come to her for a weekend.

You can’t accuse me of not shooting you straight, I’m just telling you my experience. Of course I’m happy for my friends but I went to SEVEN WEDDINGS in 2012, I was a bridesmaid in two of them, sang in three, and bought a gift for each little tree-lighting ceremony they had in between. It’s a good thing weddings aren’t about me because I would have slashed everything and run out with the cake. Not really, but maybe if I was wearing a purple cape.

BUT, none of those things, not one, was like this wedding. It was on a beautiful farm, far away from everything, but luxurious nonetheless, starry, rustic, dramatic and sweet.

 

 

 

My friend rode in to the ceremony on a horse-drawn cart with her father, I shit you not, and the farm staff ladies were ushering us all around with headphones in their ears and talking on their radios. The bride gave us flasks of rum because it was a dry (liquor) county, she covered the expense of getting hair, makeup or nails done at a fancy day spa, and she gave us these handy dandy gift bags with treats and snacks and other great stuff. She also paid the rest of my deposit of my sofa-bed lodging. She is a very nice and lovely person and I don’t want her to be too annoyed when she reads this post at all of my wedding bitching, you understand what I mean.

But, I am oh-so-proud of my speech, I’ll say it. I jotted down my notes and practiced them as I kicked up dust bumping the way to Cleveland.

As I bumped along the dusty, dirt, out-of-reception roads of Cleveland, GA, I began to stick together my speech.

The words lined up into sentences like a perfectly executed amateur painting, raw and oh-so-real. Half of my life has been spent knowing this lovely friend of mine who’s getting married tomorrow.

 

This is what tumbled out at the actual ceremony:

Half of my lifetime ago, before I owned my first Nokia cell phone, you know the kind, I met Cate.

We were both recent ATL transplants and shared a dislike of PE, eating proper portions and sunburns.

In 3rd period sophomore year physics, there were 6 students, 2 of which were Cate and I. The class was lorded over by the infamous Vaunda Noerenberg and was as miserable as it sounds.

We learned about things like the study of matter and its motion through space and time, that pressure over area equals force, and through this course, I pressured Cate to help me in areas of physics and a bond was formed by one of life’s greatest forces, friendship.

As time went on, we graduated, went to college, got our degrees and continued to bond over sleepovers and a love of ice cream (assuming I could find her house because I have a terrible sense of direction and her parents moved a lot).

Knowing Cate has made my youth sweeter, cushier, more bearable and more delicious. So it was no surprise when Kevin met Cate and his life became sweeter, cushier, more bearable and more delicious.

So naturally, when he asked me for her hand <(pause for laugh)>, I said I’d think about it as long as he liked cats.

Cate and Kevin: Congratulations.

I wish you all the best as you study what matters and its motion through space and time.

To Kevin and Cate.

I felt the way a painter must feel when an easel accurately holds what they felt, what they envisioned for their expression and hoped would translate.

 

In spite of the rigmarole, It felt, for me personally, like the end of an era. Nearing the end of my 20s, a good chunk of my friends are married off, most of the close ones, including my sister. They’ve disembarked for a new land that I don’t know, can’t see, and in a language I don’t speak.

Perhaps this trip, in addition to being a beautiful day and a fun celebration, nears the end of the frenzied wedding routine (sweet and fun and often sweaty as they have been).

I danced under the lights amongst the very diverse crowd in attendance, it was just as it should have been. My best friend from high school got married. Let us eat cake, let us dance, let us send them off with sparklers.

Despite the exertion of travel and the compunction of returning home, amidst the contained grief of saluting another good friend off and away, it was a beautiful day.

It was perfect, even.

 

It was perfect, even.