30-May-99 Ilana's Wedding

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Another trip to the airport, I'm beginning to get good at that. My mother is well, and we're going to Idaho to see her this summer, so it wasn't too hard saying goodbye.

Then it was time to get ready to go to Ilana's wedding. This is our neighbor three doors down the street. Ilana is a year older than Anne, and her brother is just Charley's age. The four kids spent a lot of time together years ago. Though the kids haven't been close since the end of elementary school, we're still pretty good friends of their parents and know Ilana's grandparents and a lot of her parents' friends.

The wedding was in Ashland, some twenty miles west of Boston, at a conference center belonging to Northeastern University. The ceremony was outdoors with tall pines and oaks in the background, a lake a couple of hundred yards away visible through the trees. The groom's father officiated and the couple read vows they had written. The only trace of Jewish wedding about the ceremony was breaking a glass (and the involuntary shout of “mazel tov!” from a third of the audience when that happened).

I'm not that much into details of wedding dresses (simple, close-fitting gown for the bride, no train; if she gains three pounds she won't be able to fit into her wedding gown; and simple grey dresses for the bridesmaids) and flowers (small bouquets of sweet peas).

There was a cocktail hour indoors, in the second floor of a building with a deck overlooking the tent and the chairs for the ceremony. I got a gin and tonic with perhaps more gin than I needed (summer! my thoughts are turning to gin and tonic, iced tea, buttermilk, and especially Pilsener Urquell!) and after a while surprised myself by actually talking to people. Setting my glass down on a table, I said to the woman there, “I hesitate to ask who you are, because I probably am supposed to know about half the people here,” but it turned out that her husband was a coworker of the groom's father and she didn't know anyone at all, and was glad I had spoken first.

I have more to say than time to say it, so make up the details yourself:

Dancing with the bride's grandmother and showing the best man's girlfriend the steps to Hava Nagila

Two couples at our table who knew the same hamburger joint in Rio from when they were in the Peace Corps

Cake with flowers on it, looked familiar from Cerebrations