Love Among the Memories!!
March 28th, 2013 at 8:07 am (Remarkable Weddings!)
Written by Owner BB Webb, the article below will appear soon in Southern Distinctions Magazine! (Insider tidbit…the event below inspired her to create her gorgeous grand ballroom….read on)!!!
I hiccupped in on a small plane from Atlanta to my hometown of Lititz, PA recently. I was delivering a talk at my former girl’s school and spent time with my beloved Aunt Sue and Uncle Jack. For 50 plus years I’ve visited them on their beautiful ‘farm’ which has been in our family for generations. At one time it boarded horses and when I was young, a llama named ‘Pepito’, one of the Uncle’s strange and wonderful gifts to my Aunt Sue. No, they aren’t your ordinary couple, and I always liked it that way!
We held many weddings on their grand estate over the years, my cousin Steve’s wedding one glorious June afternoon. My Aunt Sue, a triple threat, beautiful, a savvy business woman plus, she had homemaking skills and talents to rival Martha Stewart, (minus the jail incident). She could do anything!
A tenacious and exacting talent, she’d grown a rainbow of flowers around a gazebo, (which she probably built), where the ceremony was held, family seated in a semicircle to one side, as if fashioned for a magazine cover. The sky was a perfect azure, not a cloud in sight. Family members and friends entered the grounds and sat quietly as if rehearsed, while chamber music prompted the nearby willow trees to dance. This was my proud and elegant ‘Auntie’ at her stellar best!
As a woman I’d admired for decades, Sue entered poised and flowing in her taffeta, ‘Mother of the Groom’ and sat down directly in front of me. Everything was in order, the grass was coiffed and fashioned to ‘stay’, slick and perfect as the bridesmaid’s neatly combed and heavily sprayed locks. I remember a woman in pink reading a poem, another in bright florals warbled sweetly as a Nuthatch in spring.
And then, as if God were issuing a reminder, one lone grey cloud danced its small self across the sky and stopped directly above the ceremonial gazebo. The rest of the sky continued its stunning blue display but ‘Mr. Grey Cloud’ instantly began a downpour as the ‘I dos’ began beneath ‘the gazebo of joy’.
My most vivid memory was my soon-to-be new cousin, Lesley, laughing with ecstatic joy in her eyes, a knowing perhaps that, ‘s— happens’ and then my Aunt Sue’s head falling to her chest, her carefully planned event now a deluge of wet! I swear I heard her distinct Pittsburgh accent muttering, ’oh for God’s sake!’…..and indeed it was, reminding us that life is perfect in all ways, the ups, downs and turn arounds, all in divine order!
We all ran for cover under a large tent with buffet food teasing our taste buds and cheerful flowers in every corner. Our playful cloud had quickly dissipated, having performed its task and lesson for the day….
We truly have so little real control.
With matted hair and extra wrinkled linen clothing, there was no more perfect day or memorable wedding, and I’ve seen a few! (and this the event which inspired me to build our Carl House ballroom for our ever popular ‘rain back up plan’!!
Joi de vivre! Live for the day!…..it’s the best medicine I know!
