Carol and I received an invitation to the wedding of one of her sorority sisters in college this spring. The RSVP date was terribly early for a July 28 wedding, but whatever.
The wedding was held in Providence, RI, at the Brown University campus. I love the Brown University campus, because it is of the city, in the city, with no real demarcation. (Like the College of St. Rose in Albany, only MUCH bigger.)
After the Grandparents arrived to watch Lydia, we drove to the Rhode Island capital. We experienced severe rain (almost enough to pull over), beautiful sunshine, fog, more driving rain, then more beautiful weather. We stayed at a bed and breakfast on the fifth and sixth floor of one of the university buildings, then walked to get something to eat.
We walked by a woman wearing an overly long T-shirt that said “Frankie Said ‘Relax’.” What decade am I in, anyway?
The restaurant was nice, though there was a slow leak over where Carol was sitting. The most noticeable thing, though, is that all the women of the waitstaff looked alike. Quite attractive, slightly buxom, in their short black dresses. Most were dark haired, though some were blonde. One was black, one was Asian, but they had a uniform look, as though they were in some Robert Palmer video. Say, maybe Providence IS in the 1980s!
We got dressed for the wedding, walked to the chapel on the university grounds. Carol ran into a bunch of her sorority sisters, and some of the spouses were doing that “Oh, no!” eyeroll, but this actually didn’t last too long.
The wedding was nice. One of the touches was that there was a very professionally-done color insert explaining the relationship of the wedding participants to the couple. Since both sets of parents were deceased, her godmother and his daughter lit the unity candle. Her godmother and her late husband had double-dated with Lucy’s parents in the day.
Then the reception at a faculty club nearby. Great hors d’oeuvres and an open bar. The dinner was great, the music was fine. But the fascinating touch here was that at EVERY SINGLE PLACE SETTING of over 100 people, there was a picture of that person, in a frame! This included me, who neither the bride or groom had ever met. They found this picture from my blog or probably my MySpace page
and framed it. The manager in charge of the facility came to our table at one point and sighed in (mock?) indignation that the bride had shown up with 27 boxes of photographs the night before that had to be placed at specific locations.
Did I mention that the open bar lasted through dinner? I had a surprisingly good time. We each got a card so we could order pictures, if we want, but the first picture would be free – another nice touch.
We received their thank you note for our gift, postmarked within a month of the wedding, with a tri-fold brochure they made of their honeymoon in France – somehow appropriate, given that the French flag is “drapeau tricolore”. Happy second lunaversary, Lucy and Craig.