Yesterday the cutest little save-the-date postcard showed up in my mailbox. My pals Steph and Erik are getting married in Minnesota in June, and Steph is tackling loads of wedding planning tasks in addition to finishing grad school, prepping for life as a foreign service officer and generally acting as a super human. You go girl.
This postcard directs people to Steph and Erik’s wedding website, on which I make an appearance.
As a bridesmaid, I’ve known the couple’s upcoming wedding day for a while now, but the date that really stuck in my head was November 1: the deadline for ordering my bridesmaid dress FROM GEORGIA.
I made the deadline, but only by visiting three bridal shops, getting measured three times by three different people with three different results, and calling my mom to whine about the curse of the voluptuous Samuelson hips. I was not pleased when after the first round of measurements, I came home to order my dress online and found out that my bust and waist proportions fit nicely into my normal size category and my hip measurements bumped me up by four sizes.
Four. Vier. Quatre. Cuatro.
And to keep the Spanish going, that was NO BUENO.
Luckily, it all worked out. I ordered what I truly think will be the right size. Also, I’m mentally prepared to fast for the month of May if need be.
Now, here’s insider scoop:
When Steph’s website was in its early stages of development she used this image for my profile. It perfectly depicts the seriousness of our youth and was taken when we were on our “big girl trip” to Duluth after high school graduation but before the first (scary) college days. We look absolutely cartoonish, and I love it.
In my bridesmaid bio, among other things, Steph wrote:
Laura’s taught Steph some of the finer points of MN farm-living, humoring her every spring in their annual search for new kittens and explaining to Steph that the smell of manure in the air is not ’gross.’
I’d like to qualify this statement by saying that I’m not some kind of super freak who thinks poo in the air smells good. Rather, I would tell her to breathe through her mouth and insist that matters could be worse: hogs and turkeys. Enough said.
Finally, I’m wondering, what’s the standard procedure for calling shotgun on groomsmen? I’d like dibs on the tallest one. All the bridesmaids are about the same height, except for Ms. Ruud who is very Ruud-like and an example of good things comin’ in small packages. If all the bridesmaids are the same height, but I will undoubtedly wear the highest heals, that makes perfect sense, right?
Introducing: The Boob Cake
Cora came home from a baby shower today and announced, “I brought us leftovers!”
I anticipated munching on some mini quiche or fruit salad this afternoon, but instead Lena and I looked over and saw a giant bottle of wine and an oddly shaped pastry.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A BOOB!” she responded. “It used to be Tracy’s whole middle.”
Television shows like Cake Boss and Ace of Cakes are evidently spawning a zillion witty cake creations and today’s fondant baby belly exemplifies that any occasion is right for a sugary sculpture.
For me, living with a sister who is four years older is like looking into the future. I don’t exactly foresee eating another cake breast in the near future but rather living Cora’s lifestyle.
Cora and Harold are on wedding overload. They’ve been invited to five weddings in five months, and are attending, throwing and co-hosting more showers than Seattle. My friends are just starting to talk about weddings and —gasp— babies, but I know before long I’ll be booking airfare and bookmarking Target’s wedding registry on my computer.
I’ve noticed one of the best things about a momentous life occasion is that it brings together old friends. Cora and Harold have seen a ton of their high school or college pals because of all these weddings and new babies, and those are two very good reasons to reunite down the road.
Last night the Jones/Swanson/Yue posse headed out to Wilmington Island for a distinctly Southern event. Stephanie and David, good friends of Cora and Harold, are getting married today and last night was their rehearsal dinner.
David’s family owns a dock and water’s edge property on the island so a few dozen family and friends gathered for a backyard low country boil. The boil is traditionally sausage, shrimp, crab, potatoes and corn cooked together for an all-in-one pot all-you-can-eat buffet.
David and Stephanie also had oyster stations set up and I had my first crack at shelling oysters. Actually, I just directed groomsman Danny to shell a few for me. I was hesitant to try the oysters, but when Danny topped them with cocktail and hot sauce they ended up tasting delicious.
Because Cora and I both shamelessly made the Southern boys (who have a lifetime of practice opening shellfish) serve us our food, they had to dish us a little harrassment too. When someone mentioned that they had a lot of crackers, Danny said, “I know, it seems we’ve got too many Yankees too.”
Thirty years ago today my parents were married. This morning my family was playing a game of Uno around a picnic table at our campsite when my dad said, “This is the first time we’ve been camping on our anniversary. You’d think after 30 years we’d be out of new things to do.”
I think he underestimates the life he and my mom lead. The reason we were playing Uno is because Karina, the Brazilian exchange student my parents are hosting this school year, knew the game because she also plays it at home. New and exciting things are happening around here all the time and I think the reason my parents are still happy together is that they continually try new things even if one doesn’t really understand what the other is thinking. My mom goes on backpacking “vacations” that seem like more work than what people normally do when they punch the time clock and my dad uses his vacation time to complete seemingly endless farm work in the spring and fall.
It’s also fitting that their anniversary fell on an uncommonly-late Labor Day. Having a healthy relationship is a lot of work and they’re proof for any young couple that you can get through all of life’s trials with faith, patience, humor, and companionship.
Congrats Mom and Dad!
I returned to my old job at a golf course and banquet facility this summer as a way to make a little spending money. Over the past few years, I’ve worked dozens of weddings and last night the reception was the most beautiful one I’ve seen. It’s amazing how thousands of dollars worth of fresh flowers, brilliant white chair covers, and countless candles can transform a stark basement room adjacent to a cornfield into an awe-inspiring oasis.
Part of the reason the reception had so many candles was because the wedding favor for each guest was a votive inscribed with the names of the couple and the date. I couldn’t help but chuckled to myself when at the end of the night the best man tried stuffing his candle into the pocket of his tuxedo jacket and said to another guest, “Oooo a candle! I can get all kinds of romantic with myself.”
Another thing I loved about the wedding last night was the music. The evening started out on a super-cute note when a couple in their 60s began dancing alone to Coldplay’s song Green Eyes, which was playing softly in the background before dinner was served. Green Eyes happens to be my favorite song by the quartet of Brit boys and it was amazing to to see the elderly couple sway to such mushy-gushy lyrics as “Honey you are the rock upon which I stand.”
Not all of the songs played were sappy ballads, though. Minnesotan wedding dances all seem to start with the same play list and then ad lib a bit depending on the couple or the crowd. Last night’s DJ blasted a few standard songs like, Love Shack, Twist and Shout, Thank God I’m a Country Boy, and (by request) The Beer Barrel Polka. I find it amusing that all of these oldie gems are sprinkled amongst bump-and-grind hits from the Top 100 charts. The combo works because after a few kegs of beer, the guests who would normally be appalled by the profane lyrics of modern music just seem to bop along with their circa 1950 dance moves or amuse the all-too-sober employees at McArthur’s by shakin’ their grove thang like the youngsters.
I am endlessly amused by the life my friends envision for me. I would say the probability of me getting married in a barn is quite small but I’m open to some non-traditional ideas. Cora and Harold will be celebrating their 1-year anniversary the weekend after next. Their museum ceremony certainly set the bar high for me, not that it’s an issue at the moment.
Anyway, the barn-wedding comment is a great reason to tell the story of my parent’s wedding. Here goes:
My parents got married September 6, 1980 on a beautiful fall day in a farming community. The entire township of Vasa had a population just shy of 900 in the 2000 census and the actual “town” of Vasa is one of those blink and you miss it type places.
My mom and dad got married in THE church in Vasa but didn’t exactly draw a crowd. Whenever my dad talks about it, he mentions the people in the pews. “You looked out, at it was all women!” he says. You see, all the husbands and sons were out combining* during the wedding because it was such nice weather.
After the ceremony my parents had their reception and hog roast on my grandpa’s dairy farm. All of the husbands and sons, some of whom never RSVP-ed because their attendance was dependent on the weather, showed up starved from working all day. THEY. ATE. EVERYTHING. So much so that by the time my mom stopped welcoming guests and accepting congratulations the food was gone and she didn’t get anything to eat. The Samuelson and Swanson families are both notorious for massive quantities of food and at the joining of the clans, every morsel was devoured. What irony!
* For all of my farm-oblivious readers: combining is the same as harvesting where you take the crops out the fields. A combine is a giant machine that separates the grain from the plants (like corn kernels from the entire stalk) thus combine can be a verb and noun simultaneously.
