Quaker Wedding

The Quaker wedding was actually quite nice, even though it started at 10:30 in the morning. Everyone was warned ahead of time that it was mostly and hour and a half of silence, but since we all love our friend Monica very much we went. There were 170 people there. It is run just as a regular Quaker meeting with very short, to the point, vows exchanged by the couple. The first fifteen minutes are complete silence. Then after the vows the silence was broken only by people wanting to "minister" to the couple. What that meant was anyone who wanted to share their good wishes or a poem or reading. Many of our friends had prepared short speeches to share at the ceremony. Later Monica said that it was what they referred to as a "popcorn" service with people popping up one right after another. So it wasn't as boring as we had feared. Actually, it was quite nice. I told Jonathan (who missed most of it) that if I had a choice of an hour of silence and an hour of someone going on about how god was blessing this union, I would pick silence every time. They did mention in their vows that they would stay faithful with "divine assistance." I think that is just a clever way of saying that if they cheat it is god's fault.

We left Jackson home with Lyle's mom, but Sam and Rowan were both there. The Quakers had a kids room set up in the basement of the hall with two babysitters, but some adult from our party was down there the whole time; Jonathan was not sorry to be missing the festivities above. After the service they had a lovely buffet lunch where all of the items were brought from various homes. Then it was on to music and dancing. It was 2pm! We decided to skip the dancing and head home. Lyle to grading a me to a movie. Woo hoo!