Wedding Pt 4

Some thoughts on the night.

I learned that this venue where the festivities took place is a “castle” where they will not even entertain reservations for a fete under six figures.

We drove up to a gate that entered a rounded cul’d sac in the truest sense. It was a round walled off area with 4 or 6 statues in niches in the wall. The road continued up a long graveled drive with exquisitely manicured trees lining each side. It ended at a gate house that you drove under and into a cobble stone court yard.

A valet met us and we unloaded for the night.

Dude, do not take my car! I have done valet only once. It seems unnatural to hand a complete unknown youth the keys to a car only 6 months old.

We entered the grand foyer with a coat room to the left and a valet/attendant room to the right. The grand staircase:

At the top was a second foyer with a round table holding cards with our table assignments for the night.

Two men played stunningly beautiful classical music on violins, but it was almost lost in the din of over a hundred voices.

I met people K has told me of for ten years. Some I met 4 years ago at the christening of K’s first nephew. I met K’s cousins and aunts and uncles and second cousins… you get the idea.

Then we shuffled into the wedding hall, I wrote about that already. I noted the abundance of yarmulkes and saw one fall off a head. That is where the thought of bobby pins, not god holding them on came to me.

I laughed at the string quartet playing “All You Need is Love” and struggled to remember what movie I had seen that done in. I still can’t remember.

The rooms were magnificent in the true sense of the word.

In the room with shrimp and vegetable noshes, there was a picture of the castle before restoration. In the statuary alcoves in this room, someone had spray painted a Pac Man ghost in one. To look at it now, it was resplendent and humming with noshers.

The other room with food had a fire place and high ceilings. I looked out the doors to the “lawn” It was out of a European castle in that it was a long grass yard that ran the length of the castle. It was bordered on its edge by a low stone balustrade.

The dining room where over 25 tables were set for 12 people, was oval with glass windows 6 or 7 feet high looking out onto the “lawn”.

It had a wooden floor in the center, for dancing, and I do not remember if it was parquet or not.

The center piece of each table was a large glass vase with budding cherry blossom branches, encircled by smaller vases with white hydrangea and pink roses.

Large glass chandeliers hung over the dance floor and wall sconces soft lit the walls.

The too loud band murdered almost everything: Bon Jovi, AC/DC, The Outfield and an atrocious free form rap in the middle of Gloria Gainor’s “I Will Survive”. No mercy was shown or given to Run Around Sue, Don’t Stop Believing or C C Rider, which the band played about 4 times.

I do not dance. From long history, I just don’t.

The band launched into Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind and K took me to the dance floor.

We were dancing to a native Long Islander’s music, in a castle, in New York. We are here.

This was as if to say we have arrived where we are supposed to be for now. All was right with the world.

Peace

C