Oh, the details are many...

...but they are all coming together, slowly but surely. Yesterday evening we attended to a wee wedding detail. We asked the daughter of a friend of ours to be our flower girl - I mean, blossom fairy. That completes the wedding party proper, but for one last person: My cousin, much older than I am because of the ages of our parents. I have to go over to my mom's to look up his number in the kitchen rolodex because she's out of town, so I can't just call her to get it.

Since my dad is not here to walk me down the aisle, I've asked three people to step in. It may seem a bit excessive, but I have to fight back sadness, if not actual tears, every time I think about the fact that my dad is not here to walk me down the aisle. I actually discussed arriving before the guests and just greeting them from the front with Brian... In the end, there are two men that I think of when I think of my dad, his peeps as it were, and I've asked them to represent. They'll walk me down halfway, to where Pius has a break in the pews (would be the transept, if Pius were a basilica), where my cousin (blood) will walk me down the rest of the way.

And now we have the wee one, who will be leading the way. According to some random site I googled, starting with the Middle Ages, flower girls were assigned a special job - to walk down the wedding aisle ahead of the bride and groom and spread grain (not flowers) in order to pave the way for a new beginnings, fertility and happiness in the marriage.

Whatever the roots of the tradition, it is so nice that we'll be surrounded by people we truly care about. In fact, it's pretty blinkin' awesome. We hadn't thought to have a blossom fairy in the beginning, but it works out well , and, besides, it was fun to ask. We took her flowers in the colors that she'll use (white, with spring green), and gave her a Save-The-Date card with ribbons in the wedding color on the back and a printout of the dress that the Ladies of Honor will be wearing, in case mom would like to model the blossom fairy dress off of that (we're not calling them bridesmaids). She seemed pretty pleased, and ran off to swing on the new swingset that had gotten assembled that day and explain to her little sister that she was going to be in a wedding. After all, being in a wedding can only compete with a new swingset for so long. :-) Anywho, I'm not sure the near-3-yr-old grasped the significance of what her big sister was trying to communicate to her, but it was really cute from the adult observational perspective.

We're spending obviously a lot, lot, lot of time ironing out the details. It's been frustrating and even stressful at times, but now, after months of working on things, now that I can start to visualize what it'll look like (at least, what I'm hoping it'll look like), now it's starting to feel like the time and effort and attention to detail are really more like us weaving a tapestry of events and details and ritual to commemorate the commitment we're making to each other. The Harper online etymology dictionary says that in Old English, the word was weddung or the "state of being wed". The word's meaning of a "ceremony of marriage" is recorded from c.1300; the usual O.E. word for the ceremony was bridelope, literally "bridal run," in reference to conducting the bride to her new home.

Interestingly, wedding cake is recorded from 1648, and the verb "wed" stems from the Old English weddian "to pledge, covenant to do something, marry," from P.Gmc. Aditional etymological history is: wadjojanan (cf. O.N. veðja "to bet, wager," O.Fris. weddia "to promise," Goth. ga-wadjon "to betroth"), from PIE base *wadh- "to pledge, to redeem a pledge" (cf. L. vas, gen. vadis "bail, security," Lith. vaduoti "to redeem a pledge"). The sense remained "pledge" in other Germanic languages (cf. German Wette "bet, wager"); the development to "marry" is unique to English.

Anywho, back to the blossom fairy's halo, the measurements of the aisle runner, the menu and beverage selection... All chosen with meaning, carefully selected, with hope and joy and anticipation.