Wedding Rituals

I love my niece. She is my niece by marriage, but we couldn't be any closer if she was an actual blood relative. Neither could her mom and me for that matter. My sister-in-law and I don't necessarily talk every day or even for weeks sometimes because we are both so busy raising large active families. But she is still the encouraging, protective older sister I never had growing up. And her little girl called me last Friday night to share something very special with me. I felt so privileged to be one of the first to hear. "Guess what, I'm getting married!"

The truth is that I had already had a head's up from her mom that things were about to take place and it just about killed me waiting to congratulate her! Her fiance did the right thing and asked her parents' permission before waiting five loooong days to make it official in truly romantic style - a photographic trip down memory lane - displayed so beautifully with mushy explanations for what made each of their celluloid moments so special to him. Leo is the guy the whole extended family has wanted to be "the one" for a long time. We were just waiting around for Lindsay to feel confident enough to finally figure that out too!

Lindsay also had some wonderful news for my seven-year-old daughter. (We are three peas in a pod - all of us loving fashion and ceremony) She gets to be the flower girl! Yay! She is over the moon, for sure. However, Lindsay has also tapped my older son to be the miniature groom with my other niece, Lindsay's little sister for the mini bride. And my youngest son has been honored with the Ring Bearer title.

While all of this is quite exciting for the estrogen-induced members of our household, the boys have been a little more hesitant to say the least. They love their cousin. And more importantly to them, they love Leo. If being in his wedding means they might get to wrestle with him at the reception and throw cake into each other's mouths hoops-style, well, they might just have to consider walking down the aisle their obligatory privilege.

"But" my little one wanted to know, "What is a Ring Bear? Please tell me I don't have to wear a costume."

"No." I replied. "It's not Ring Bear. It's Ring Bearer. A Ring Bearer is the one who takes the wedding rings down the aisle to give to the people getting married so they can give them to each other. And you'll probably be wearing a tuxedo."

"Why don't they just carry their own rings?"

"Because it's just fancier to make a big deal out of the rings by having everyone know that the ring part is about to happen. And wedding dresses don't have pockets."
(It's always good to confuse them with a backup reason so they forget to ask "Why?"

"Well, how will I take the rings down there?"

"On a pillow."

"On a pillow?! What the heck do you carry rings on a pillow for?! That makes no sense. That's just silly! Pillows are for sleeping. Not for a wedding!"

SPOKEN LIKE A TRUE-BLUE RED-BLOODED AMERICAN BOY!

Later we got back on the topic of the tuxedos - after mentioning the wedding is in July and will be held outdoors.

"Mom, that will be too hot for a suit! And PLEASE tell me I don't have to wear a bow on my neck!"

"Well, that's just what's traditional. But Lindsay's pretty stylish. Maybe she'll have you wear white pants and shirt or something."

"Yeeeeaaahh! That would be so cool. Then I could wear my football pants!" (And he was serious.)

And my older son, upon hearing he would be paired up with his own cousin (the one who has a crush on him and justifies it by way of her adoption - just like I did when I was little and had a crush on my adopted cousin) to play bride and groom? Well, I have no idea how his ten-year-old self knew to make a joke about it by bringing up Arkansas, but that is what he did.

So as you can tell, Leo pretty much holds all the man-who-gets-how-to-make-a-girl-swoon cards around here. But then, he had a bubbly, talented girl to get to say "Yes!" And I 'm so glad she did. Congratulations Lindsay and Leo!