My youngest brother Joe got married today to the woman he has been with for 7 years (or so). They've been engaged for the last two and a half years.
Wedding was nice. There were 5 bridesmaids and 4 groomsmen. Matt was to have been best man. And in memory of him, one of the bridesmaids was unaccompanied and there was no best man. The wedding was in the same church as Matt's funeral, and I couldn't get it out of my head that Matt should have been there. Before the ceremony started I had to leave for a bit to compose myself. And I cried some during the ceremony too. Not so much for Joe & Sarah, cause I've been happy for them for a long time. This has been one of those relationships that we've known for along time that they were meant for each other. To me, this was only acknowledging something that has taken place a long time ago. But I couldn't get Matt out of my head and so the mixture of happiness and sadness was too much.
So me, my brother Dan, my cousin Sarah and my cousin Dave seem to be the confirmed bachelors among the family. All of is 29 or older. None of us even close to marriage. Dan is the only one who claims to have a girlfriend, but I don't think that's really that serious (as noted in previous entries). I don't really care one way or the other if I ever get married, but I would really like to grow old with someone. And I am more or less growing old without anyone right now. Although slowly. I still have plenty of time before I am old and it will be too late to grow old with someone. At that point, I will just have to be old with someone. This is not morbid reflection on the state of my dating life. I am pretty happy with my dating life althoguh I would prefer to "have that special someone" to use the sappy phrase. My dad actually said on the walk down the aisle "2 down, 2 to go."
So they had the "traditional" dances at the wedding reception. Bride & groom. Bride & her father. Groom and his mother. I love my mom and dad. However, I cringe a lot at my mother's fuddy-duddy-ness and her constant foisting long lost relatives off on me to catch up since they knew me when I was "this big." But one really cool thing about my mom & dad is that they can dance. Ballroom and polka. They are pretty good. My dad is especially smooth. They wouldn't win any contests or anything, but out on the dance floor today they were obviously the best dancers there. It was too cool. The DJ played a polka for them, which really shows how good they are. And then my grandmother and grandfather got out there and polka'ed too. And they were pretty good. And no one else did; not even any of my North Dakota German relatives who were there and do a lot of polka-ing.
I need to learn how to ballroom dance.