footpad, posts by tag: nightfox - LiveJournal (original) (raw)

As I may have previously remarked, akeelaand I are getting civilly partn married in just under three weeks. On Saturday, nachtfuchs and tanidareal showed us how it's really done.

Of all the weddings I've ever been to, this was, without question, the brightest and best and most unalloyedly beautiful.

The wedding was held in a moated castle, a place a good three or four centuries old, with the most extraordinarily furnished rooms. Aki and I ended up with a suite including a solid marble table, the most ravishingly-crafted antique chest of drawers I've ever seen, framed letters from the Empress Maria Theresa, a bed that looked like marble until we knocked on the plastic, oil paintings of Hapsburg royalty, and properly authentic dodgy plumbing. The entire place was like that and we adored it.

The wedding was held in mediaeval period dress, because... well, it fitted the ambience, and why not? The only exceptions were the betrothed themselves: Nighty quietly magnificent in a grey suit of formal morning dress, and Tani looking, if possible, even more beautiful than usual in a full white bridal gown.

The ceremony itself was officiated by unclekage, outside under a small wrought-iron cupola, with a lovely blend of humour, gentle satire, pathos, and the ancient, power-charged words of the marriage ceremony from the old English Book of Common Prayer. While the wedding wasn't prominently 'furry' (thank heavens), a few suitably noble-looking fursuits stood as a guard of honour to either side, lending the occasion a surprisingly effective air of atavism. During the ceremony, Tani wept for joy, and she wasn't the only one. We all applauded wildly when the pair kissed.

Then there was champagne, and food, and all the wine anybody could drink, and dancing, and a laser show, and a couple of silly happy games, and then at midnight Tani and Nighty danced alone in the circle while we all held candles around them, and for long minutes a gentle glamour weaved itself around them on this, the last dance of their wedding day.

Glamour, blessing, beauty, charisma: these are things conferred by the beholder. As I knelt on the steps smiling up at the dancing couple, I felt I at last understood the why of weddings. A wedding is truly a gathering to bless the union, and all things in a wedding should conspire to exalt and celebrate it. So many wedding traditions point to this purpose, yet so many are followed blindfold, without understanding of the deep alchemy that lies beneath them. Whoever conceived that candlelit dance, got it intuitively, beautifully and wonderfully right. That ceremony drew us in, it devoted us to the pair whose night this was, it summoned us all to affirm their union in our hearts and souls, and in some deep sense it seemed, even more than the wedding ceremony itself, to seal and cement the knowledge that they are, now and for as long as the heart may grasp, truly husband and wife.

The German word for 'wedding' is Hochzeit: the 'best time'. Now I know why.

Long live the bride and groom, and may their love sustain and exalt them now and for as much of the future as is granted to us all.