Cupcakes & Mountain Lions, or: the bride had a snake tattoo. . .

Woo hoo! There's my baby sister Emily losing her garter to her new husband Marty on Saturday, August 25, 2007, in Paso Robles, California. Love that snake tattoo! In the past I have called Emily a "snake doctor" -- but in reality what she is is a PhD in biology who did her dissertation on rattlesnakes, and who happens to love the beasties. Fortunately, Marty loves them too -- a match made in Heaven (or at least, a match made in the Arizona desert!). Their living room and study are both dominated by custom cabinets filled with snakey after rattling snakey. At the wedding, the only snakes around were the ones on the wine glasses -- here is the art Jim did for them:

Funnily, when the glasses arrived, there were a few stuck in there from "Kate and Dean's Wedding" or some normal thing, and we were laughing to imagine Kate and Dean pulling rattlesnake glasses out of their own order!

So, there were no real snakes at the wedding, but there was a mountain lion skulking nearby. When we gals drove back in to the ranch Friday night after our "bachelorette party" we saw very plainly a very large mountain lion in the brush, only a few yards from where our husbands were gathered around the campfire. Yeeks! We could see its tail swishing as it prowled away. After that, the younger children were kept close. I was thrilled by the glimpse, though, and this makes it extra cool: at the wedding of Emily's best friends, Dawn & Rob, a few years ago in the Sonoran Desert, a bobcat prowled right past in a dry creekbed, just minutes before the ceremony began, in full view of all the guests. So, Emily and Dawn both have some kind of big cat karma, I guess.

And besides the mountain lion, there was a pig very much in attendance. Her name is Polly By Golly and she lives on site and wanders happily around, grunting.

Here's the spot, The Dancing Horse Ranch, in the middle of Central California wine country:



And here's the wedding:




Don't they look great? This was surely the first time many of the guests had seen Emily in makeup and a dress -- she's a very outdoorsy biologist-type girl, and she looked so beautiful! She got that stunning dress here in Portland from a designer on NW 23rd St. It's hand-painted silk from India. Lovely! And her hair was done by my Aunt Joyce, who was also my bridal fairy godmother.

Here's my extended family, my parents and siblings and niece and husband and honorary family members, Dawn and Rob:

It was an informal, non-religious ceremony, without a minister. Dawn was the "rev" as we called her, just as Emily was for her wedding. It makes things personal and very lovely. (I want to say thanks to everyone who gave me suggestions for readings! There were some terrific suggestions, and I ended up reading from Poetry & Marriage by Wendell Berry, as suggested by blue poppy, and Dawn incorporated the final two stanzas from Marge Piercy's The Implications of One + One** into the ceremony. I love that poem -- thanks, Tinker, for pointing me to it! And thanks to everyone else too. Marty's sister read the fabulous passage from The Velveteen Rabbit about becoming "real" -- if you haven't read it in a while, check it out.)

The bride and groom with their parents:


And lots more pictures:
Me and Jim and my freshly empinked hair:

Me with my brother and sister (Alex looking thrilled to be with us):

He looks a lot happier here, with his daughter, Isabella:


Something you see a lot of at weddings, nieces in pretty dresses:

And here's Marty, who has "a way with the ladies":

Smooch:

And more and more:






(Acting out the song "Kung Fu Fighting" -- )

Oh, and did I mention there were cupcakes?


**from "The Implications of One + One" by Marge Piercy:
Ten years of fitting our bodies together
and still they sing wild songs in new keys.
It is more and less than love: timing,
chemistry, magic and will and luck.

One plus one equal one, unknowable except
in the moment, not convertible into words,
not explicable or philosophically interesting.
But it is. And it is. And it is. Amen.