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back in the jurassic period when wheels were still square and things moved at a less-than-snails pace on account of that, in the midst of which for reasons i either can no longer recall or no longer care to recall i became a married person, the Thing that i Learned from the Experience really is that it's important for the people actually getting married to be able to look back on the ceremony and think that it really was in some ways about them and not just about the families. this can be a dicey affair. i was pretty fortunate in this regard; my brother was much less so.
anyway.
we dispatched with the garter and replaced it with a flower head-dress thing. instead of the tossing, all the single ladeez joined hands and danced around in a circle around the bride who was blindfolded. she may or may not have also been spinning, i can't remember. everything was at that point. but i digress. the bride who is blindfolded puts the ring of flowers on her head onto that of one of the other ladeez whom she cannot see.
there was something really sweet about that. i can't put my finger on it. but i remember it after all this time.
CONTROL THE MUSIC AT THE RECEPTION. this cannot be stressed enough. do NOT do the hokey pokey or the chicken dance. we had a bluegrass band. this meant that our reception devolved at speed into a party, but a really really fun party, one that we had to be thrown out of at 2 am in order to depart for the honeymoon thing. because we had been living together you see. a good party was way more rare than anything that awaited. this only tells how good the party was.
i think the chicken dance degrades everything around it. it is a capitulation to something. not sure what. the anti-cthulu maybe. it makes you feel that you've been covered with some nasty slimy thing, or that an unsavory person in leiderhosen has managed to rub you down with a bratwurst. this is a feeling best avoided.
i think we had a carriage bring us from a church (!) to the reception. i think there were horses involved. i remember liking the carriage ride. even so, i think that's probably situation-optional.
minimize the need for guests to drive.
right: i think there might have been some dance sequence but it was more just because people wanted to do it than a RITUAL during which folk were expected to stand about and say oo and aah while some vile power ballad unfolds its unfortunate characteristics in the soundspace. so i would not actively prevent the parental dancy thing---you know, i wouldn't have any of those dude who carry the little doorknobs on sticks that typically whack puritans upside the head who fall asleep during the interminable services those people go to on sunday descend upon any parents who want to dance with their kid. i'd just encourage people to not make a Production out of it and minimize the vile power ballad thing.
o yeah. the food: simple but good. that's all it has to be.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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