I
officiated another wedding on the beach yesterday. As usual, there were more than a few things
that didn’t go exactly as planned, but then I usually plan for that.
This
one was held on the beach at Jamaica Beach.
At 11 a.m. On a Saturday. In June.
To say that the beach was crowded would be an understatement of epic
proportions. They had arrived early that
morning, however, and a very nice little arch was set up and anchored to the
sand with two large sandbags. There were
groups of people crowded as close as they could get one either side. Cars were parked and driving all around. Golf carts were puttering through the area as
well. Each of them had someone either
taking pictures of the cute beach wedding or ogling at the craziness of it all
or sighing in winsome anticipation of just such an event in their own
future.
But
the winner of the most unusual award for this particular wedding has to go to
the lady acting as coordinator. She set
up a small, 2 foot by 2 foot table next to the archway. And on that tiny table, in no particular
order, were …
A
bouquet for the bride to toss after the ceremony (which, by the way was caught by the wind cand blown through the traffic
lane and almost into a parked car window).
A
homemade wedding cake, made by the coordinator (How do I know she made it?
Because the icing was melting in the heat and humidity and she screamed
at one point, “My flower! My flower is
melting!”)
A
set of three beautiful unity candles (Not
useful at the beach because the wind refuses to allow open flames of such a
tiny nature)
Sand
ceremony jars (Not to be deterred, she
also provided jars of three different colors of sand and an empty, hand
decorated wine bottle to pour the sand into)
Champagne
cups and a tiny little bottle of sparkling, fizzy apple juice (For the bride and groom to toast each other
and share a drink with arms interlocked)
Some
decorative flowers (Can’t have a boring
table that close to the archway)
Plastic
forks and paper plates (Remember the
cake?)
A
large knife to cut the cake (One of those
cake server things. The bride and groom
got fussed at though. They didn’t follow
proper procedure. They didn’t squash the
cake into each other’s faces. Wonder if the
fact that they had less than an hour to get to their cruise ship had anything
to do with that decision?)
Napkins
(Messy, messy, messy)
After
the wedding the bride’s bouquet was added to the mix, as were several bottles
of water and pieces of cake. (2 Feet by 2 feet. I think maybe that table belonged to Mary
Poppins at one time).
Oh,
and I almost forgot. There was also a
set of seashells. Cool looking, but
their purpose remained a mystery … until the wedding was in full swing. I called for the rings at the appropriate
moment. The coordinator, who was now
also the maid of honor, leapt into action.
She raced over to her little table, grabbed her purse which was now also
there, pulled her phone case out, opened it, and, though she struggled a bit, finally
managed to pull out from it … two rings.
She hastily placed the rings into the aforementioned seashell decoration
and raced the concoction over to the groom.
He took it from her and handed it to the best man. The best man then held it up for the groom to
pick up one of the rings. Now here’s the
thing. The groom already had a ring in
his hand. He had the engagement ring in
his pocket, and was just going to use that.
Now he had to try to figure out what to do with the wedding band as
well. He crammed them both onto her
finger in no particular order. Figured
that was easy enough to sort out later.
The bride then took his ring from the shell contraption and the wedding
continued. Reception was held right
there on the beach. All who wanted one
got a piece of the melting cake and a bottle of water. Photos all around.
We
got ‘em hitched. As far as I know they
made their cruise departure time. Their
license is in the mail to their county clerk.
Congrats to the happy couple.
Psalms
69:30 says, “I will praise God's name in
song and glorify him with thanksgiving.”
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