And sometimes good things happen too
In the midst of BP and the daunting bad news that comes across CNN every day, the shakiness of the economic recovery that we are in, and botched wars and raids, we went to a wedding last night. It was at St. Louis Cathedral in the middle of Jackson Square in the heart of the French Quarter – just beautiful. There were some noticeable differences about this wedding from many others that I have attended, and let’s just start with this – the bridesmaids had serious biceps. Then when the priest asked who was married in the audience, there was a noticeable absence of hands on the bride’s side of the church, mainly because her mother is a lesbian and practically everyone on her side is gay. Now mind you, there were many couples there who have been together twenty years plus, but none could raise their hand and say they were married.
Then the wedding party made its way to Angela King’s art gallery on Royal and Bienville where the reception was held and amidst the art hung on the walls and sculpture, we all began to dance to what seemed like a playlist from every bar mitzvah I’ve attended in my life. One glance around the room and you could see how diverse the attendees were – black, white, Hispanic and everything in between – my kind of party. There were old relationships, new relationships and question mark relationships ending and beginning all under one roof. But we all got down and partied nonetheless.
And perhaps most striking was the couple themselves – two young kids who don’t fit anyone’s particular cookie cutter image who love each other so much their email address is XlovesY, now doesn’t that hold so much promise?
It was nice to spend the night among friends, to help celebrate the joyous occasion of a friend’s daughter getting married, and to know that while these rituals of marriage, of Catholic churches, of religion, are all antiquated and maybe not even relevant to any of us anymore – they still held, last night at least, the promise of what they could be in a perfect world.