Mazeltov!

Wedding weekend has come and gone for my beloved Elle Michelle and the Epicurious Alchemist. I can truthfully say it was one of the most beautiful ceremonies I've attended. Not because the entire Chicago skyline was visible from the ballroom on a perfectly clear fall day. Not because the flowers and the people seemed to have coordinated their look in rich shades of violet and fuschia. Not because every song lit up the room with some certain guests vivid memory of a time gone by. All of those things were true but that's not quite it.

It was just so them.

Elle came down the aisle to Incubus played by a pop symphony. Dave started cracking up halfway through the vows. They wrote their own...everything. It was perfectly them.

Which made it perfectly all of us too.

My entire family was in town for the festivities and I don't just mean my parents and Brother. My other family, the neighbors who I was raised with forming a closeknit circle of the family we chose- different "aunts" and "uncles" and "cousins" all drinking wine and whiskey and taking over the dancefloor. The bride and groom led by example:
Dave: Ha! Isn't this fun?!?
L: What did I tell you about the goddamn chairs?!
Dave: What???
L: If I fall, you're coming with me. You are now legally bound to hit the ground before I do.
(conversation imagined by TKTC)

This is Mike. Mike and I grew up together. As in he was the first child I babysat for when he was a terror at 2 and I was in over my head at 10. Both a little misunderstood but not entirely misunderstood. And by that I mean we'd earned our respective reputations (him for being a smart little monster, me for a fatally percocious streak). Now we're sitting next to each other at dinner, drinking wine and talking about Vonnegut. So he may still outsmart me from time to time...

They might be giants. To be fair, L had given up on shoes at this point. Still kinda funny.

Lex and I staging a dance floor takeover one glass of chardonnay at a time.

We couldn't possibly be related. You must be kidding. So serious and then so tickled with the Mom.

This is the picture of the four of us I have and even with Danny lurking in the background, I love it. However, the one in my head is the four of us earlier in the day, sitting in my living room having coffee and listening to "Saturday Morning Music." Having my real home in my physical home all together for the first time? I think that will stick with me. Hard to know these things for sure, but I've got a good feeling.