Brian & Jane's July Wedding

Anyone who has ever met my mom and CERTAINLY anyone who has ever been to her house knows my mom has good taste. From her elegant yet eclectically furnished home to her cover-of-Bon-Appetite-Magazine dinner parties, this woman knows how to entertain. Ever since I could toddle, I watched her throw tasteful luncheons for entire women's clubs, exquisite dinner parties for my father's colleagues, and family holiday extravaganzas that took weeks to prepare. While other kids were eating Ho-Ho's after school, my sister and I would occasionally come home to 3 layer pineapple cheesecake adorned with homemade Guitard chocolate leaves. So, even though I am a strong minded 36 year-old woman with good taste of my own (although stylistically quite different than my mom's), it was with some trepidation I presented my mother with what Brian and I were planning for our wedding. Not only were we wanting to have it in the woods at my Crazy Uncle John & Aunt Sheri's house (the good kind of crazy but crazy nonetheless), but we were going to march down the aisle to live bagpipe accompaniment and walk to our reception. Oh yeah, and the piece d' resistance... everything was to be done in deep red and deep orange with a sort of Indian theme.

Granted, there was a short adjustment period while she mentally shuffled all the details and kept trying to find the sure recipe for disaster in my plans but to her credit, she never ridiculed even when my details must have sounded like sour notes to a trained musician's ears. The stress for my Uncle and Aunt was brought up and discussed. Logistics of getting guests from place to place. Mosquitos, mosquitos, and more mosquitos. Finally, after a couple of weeks of holding back complete embracement, darn if she didn't tell me she loved it. She loved it! The whole thing! Guess what she loved most of all? My crazy, could-have-looked-like-a-circus-but-didn't colors. The day of my wedding, my mom put on the reddest coat and scarlet lipstick she could find. She turned up with the orangest candles, the reddest roses, and the most delicious, vermilion, 12 gallons of wedding punch anyone has ever seen. We had a ball.

One of the most gratifying conversations I've ever had with my mother in my adult life was about a week ago when she told me how glad she was that I stuck to my vision of my wedding and didn't waver. She said she wouldn't have changed a thing. Now that's a compliment.

P.S. Check out my mom and dad hanging with Crazy Uncle John's stuffed kangaroo, Howard, at the rehersal.