Okay, we went to the wedding. The bride was truly beautiful; her Dad (our friend) was, to us, a shockingly insignificant part of the goings-on, though in fact he had a very normal part, as far as normal weddings go; and—drum roll, please—there was no dancing. Well, I take that back. There was one song while the bride and groom danced in a little space in front of the cake. Then there was a snippet of a song while the groom danced with his grandmother, and another snippet while the bride danced with her Dad. That was pretty much it, and like most aspects of most weddings these days, all of it was done for the benefit of the photographer. As Bob said, weddings any more feel like you’ve happened by the set of a TV show, not invited or anything, just kind of peeking in around the edges. I suppose it all looks great in the album afterwards.

The really funny/unfortunate part of this particular wedding was that there were two rooms at the reception, separated by French doors in the corners of both. The end result was that, in one room, there was a wedding reception going on, and in the other (ours) there was something like a church social, with a few random strangers (Bob and I) thrown in. Nothing wedding-like ever happened in our room; the bride never set foot in it, nor did the groom. The only saving grace to our room was that the bar was located in one corner, and every once in a while an emissary from the wedding party would be sent through to get drinks. Then you could gawk at them. The funniest moment came mid-evening, when the wedding coordinator came to the French doors, clapped her hands for attention in our room and then admonished us, as though we were a group of unruly children: “Be quiet! The bride is cutting the cake! Then you can all have some dessert!” And maybe even funnier than that, to me anyway, is the fact that we never got any cake. The cake was abandoned as soon as the first symbolic cuts were photographed, and sat there, inert, for a half hour or so, at which time we finally gave up and left. It occurred to us, as we drove home, that there had possibly been a master plan all along: wait out the B-Room people until they all get bored and go home, then fold up the tables, roll up the rugs and…dance!