Finding a dress to wear to this wedding had been quite an ordeal for me. I went shopping for hours (a couple of times) in Korea looking for something that would work. My sister had had the same problem back in America. We probably tried on 60 dresses or more between us. I brought a few with me in my suitcase, but they weren't all that great. My sister brought the top 2 that she had found and made me try on her second choice dress. Well, it looked great, so I stole it from her. (...Actually quite literally stole it since I forgot to pay her for it....! Umm... sorry, seester! I really will pay you back!).
The bride made her own dress, using a length of Thai lace that she had brought back with her from living in Thailand. She also made her bouquet from a number of antique looking pins and silk flowers with ribbons all around. It was lovely. The colors were a rich royal blue and peach (for the corsages). The wedding party was barefoot, at the preference of the bride and groom, and the first song on the wedding program was Howard Shore's "Concerning Hobbits" from the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack, played live by a harpist. :)
The pastor (Scott) who had been the Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) pastor at Tennessee Tech for a while is now a pastor in Mississippi, and when my brother studied a year in seminary, he had worked at the pastor's church. So there was a long connection between my brother and this pastor's family, so they were all in attendance. He was the minister who presided over the ceremony. There were several other friends and family on both sides who had traveled a long way to attend, though I think I won the prize for most distance traveled. *wink* One of the musicians was a friend of the family who had taken taekwondo with my siblings and I for years, and who started learning guitar around the same time my brother did.
There was only enough seating on pews for the family, so the rest of the guests looked on close by from a hill around the wedding arbor. All this standing led to one poor guest in the back locking their knees for too long, cutting off circulation to their head, and passing completely out during the wedding. Thankfully, there were four nurses, two primary care doctors, and a few other medical experts handy among our extended family, so the guest was in good hands and recovered quickly.
The rest of the wedding went without any real problems! Not surprisingly, there were a few tears shed during the ceremony, and the pastor's message was very moving. Someone had thought ahead and put tissue boxes on the pews for the family members, and I did get a little teary-eyed during the pastor's homily. One groomsman couldn't be there since his wife had given birth to their first baby only days before. They still managed to watch the ceremony via Skype, and I think I overheard that the other groomsmen left a gap in their standing formation to represent the missing guy (all of them were former roommates of my brother in college).
My brother dramatically swept his new bride off her feet for the ceremonial kiss! :) Afterwards we ate, drank, toasted, they danced, we visited, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves pretty well, though it started to get cold towards the end of the evening. The food included Texan and Tennessee-style BBQ, plus some Thai food too. My brother and his wife decided to have a cheesecake and other small desserts instead of a traditional wedding cake. So they served tiers of brownies, cheesecake bites, whiskey cake, and "buckeye" chocolate candies.
It was pretty emotional (in a good way) for me to hear my dad stand up next to my mom during the toasts and give the bride and groom a charge that marriage is about commitment and keeping promises. Ah, how far our family has come, by the grace of God! The bride and groom shared a first dance together (aah! I forget what song it was!), and they had the bride's dance with her dad and the groom's dance with his mom. The bouquet sort of ricocheted off my hands, but no one dived for it after that, so I sort of caught it... The bride and groom departed in a motorboat on the lake behind the parents' house to set out on their honeymoon. Handsome groom and gorgeous bride!
That evening I had a chance to visit a little longer with the Wagner side of the family (my mom's side), and distribute some of the fun surprises I had brought back from Korea. Wines (gold flake and NKorean vintage), folk games, mother-of-pearl boxes, embroidery work, ceramics, cellphone gadgets, candy, postage stamps, neckties, and the highlight of the evening: training chopsticks for my cousins' new baby. Yeah, we got a real kick out of those training chopsticks. I wonder if parents actually use those for their kids here? Maybe? The green tea "gummi chews" weren't incredibly popular, but it was a unique eating experience. ^_~ The evening of the wedding ended well, just like the wedding itself.
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