Jessica's wedding

Departing from the usual Audrey musings, I want to tell you about Jessica and Sean's wedding that Paul, Audrey and I attended last Saturday. It was held at the beautiful Triangle L Ranch in Oracle, Arizona, about an hour north of Tucson. Paul and I agreed that it was the best wedding we'd been to in some time, despite the fact that we knew almost no one there except the bride and groom.

Their wedding reminded me:

• That you don't need a lot of words to have a lot of meaning

They got married in the Quaker tradition and the marriage ceremony is silence, exchanging vows, more silence, speaking by those moved to speak, more silence, and an embrace by the couple at the end.


• That potlucks mean fabulous food if you move in the "good potluck" circles

Jessica definitely moves in the good potluck circles.


• That walking along a path illuminated only by a string of white lights is simultaneously romantic to adults and magical to babies

The Triangle L ranch hosts an annual arts event called "Glow" where they have art viewing by night. Being there at the ranch made me want to come back for that event.


• That carrot cake by committee is the best carrot cake ever

I was on the "cake team," making the icing for all the cakes, and a perk of this was getting to do the taste test a month or so back - we (the four cake bakers and I) tasted 3 carrot cakes, took notes (yes, we are grad students) and picked the best features and ingredients of each to meld into a new recipe. As Paul said "This cake is awesome."


• That Audrey loves a party

She was even dancing with one of Jessica's aunts and allowed herself to be held by another aunt for about 3 songs as Paul and I did our first swing dancing in almost a year. I was totally wearing the wrong shoes for it but it was fun.


• That sometimes staging a picture gets you a good one

Jessica and Sean were going to formally (at least semi-formally) cut the "display" cake but everyone was dancing so they just decided to cut into it and let people eat between dances. I saw them after they had cut about two pieces and said "You're not going to cut the cake? How about cutting it for me and I'll take pictures?" So they said OK and I took a picture of them "cutting" the cake they'd already cut. They didn't feed each other cake, but one of the pictures of Sean eating cake looks like Jessica just fed him a piece and it's one of my favorite pictures from the wedding!