The Potluck Bride

Once upon a time--so far-- there was a little girl who decided to get married, lack of education or two dimes to call her own or even full-time employment being no barrier. After all, God wanted her to work at Starbucks--this was her pious justification--and her boyfriend would get a teaching job someday, or when he graduated from college on the 12th of Never or in the year 2525, whichever does come first (all the smartest people take 8 or 10 years to graduate; their brains are just that big). Love is awesome and we are in it, they announced to the silly grown-ups: a wedding cannot wait. And also, by the way, could you cater our reception? Outside? On Memorial Day weekend? When it always, always rains except when it tornados. Consider it your gift to us; we have no need for things. Think of it as a potluck, except we'll tell you what to cook. The food must match our theme. (The theme, technically, was something "international," and not Misguided and Potentially Tragic Choices, or How to Send Miss Manners to An Early Grave, but, I digress.)

And thus was born the saga of my niece, The Potluck Bride. For a while there, what humor she did bring us, of the You Can't Do That, Can You? variety. Until it went all to hell. The wedding plans, I mean, and the resulting family secrets, and not the Potluck Couple. They are far too righteous for that. Just ask them if you doubt.

At some point I got disinvited from that wedding. One may think it would have been when I said, "have you asked one of your many restaurant friends to be your 'catering coordinator'? Because no, I'm not going to cook, or keep hot food hot, or cold food cold, outside, on Memorial Day weekend. You may have the celestial connections to keep enchiladas for 200 from turning into the Great Ptomaine Outbreak of '08, but I've never babysat for the infant Jesus myself." But that didn't do it. Then again, I didn't even say the last line aloud, at least not to her, directly.

Apparently the potluck groom's family objected more strongly, and not just to the details. Perchance they thought he'd have done better to continue being a shepherd. In Alabama. Where he was. (I couldn't make any of this up.) At any rate, they advised him to think it over, and the potluck betrothed thought hard. They not only decided to get married anyway, they decided to get married earlier. Spite! How biblical. Perhaps they wanted to see how many relatives assumed a less-than-immaculate conception. Plenty, by my count, though I persisted in giving them the benefit, and so far I seem to be right.

But verily when this wedding was moved to March, it did indeed become intimate. Theoretically. Momentarily. Non-exclusionarily-- or so they insisted. Their motives, they said, were so pure to be holy. Only immediate family, except that his would not be coming. Or, only immediate family plus all of their friends plus the landlord of the bride's basement (it's not an apartment, it's a basement). Plus whomever they chose to invite. But definitely no uncles or aunts--except the one who cut the cake. Apparently my ass (and that of some other second-rate relatives) is just too distracting, and if it were plopped down in a folding chair they'd never focus on their vows. Or that's one version of how they explained the need for their contracted guest list, not that they ever explained it directly to me. It's hard to have that conversation with someone who suddenly began to spend every family function hiding out in a back bedroom as if she were again in 8th grade.

But that was the second-hand gist, that a wedding is serious, and only between the girl and the boy (there's no man and no woman involved here). Anyone who had watched her grow older (though not yet grow up), taken her places, offered advice, shared both serious conversation and laughs, given gifts, tried liked hell to get her to live up to a fraction of her potential? Unwelcome. And if we were hurt, that was our problem, not hers, but she couldn't talk about it now. She had a wedding to plan.

A simple wedding, they kept insisting. A simple wedding that included a bridal tea and a bachelorette party (shhhhh: we're not supposed to know), showers and tuxedos, party favors and a band-- everything that most any wedding could. Except half her family.

So not only was I deprived of the spectacle of the potluck wedding ceremony--I'm told it included a videoconferenced speech from a deported Mexican, a devotional "over in the corner" for the bride and groom only--I pray they were not distracted--and later,a meal that I'm pretty sure was potluck, complete with plenty of booze (water into wine, don'tcha know)--I'm deprived of a story that ought to be strictly hilarious and not by turns maddening or upsetting. Because she's not only the potluck bride, an icon in the annals of bridal you've-got-to-be-kidding, she's the niece who hurt and disappointed me, who came close to breaking my heart.