Thursday, December 30, 2010:I stepped out of my car in the Crystal Plaza parking lot and into the wedding bubble that would isolate us from the everyday world and carry us for the next three days. Matt and Melany had chosen the Crystal Plaza –which has a kind of Louis Quatorze-Versailles vibe with lots of gilding and trompe l’oeil painting – at least in part because that was where Susan and Mel’s late dad Steven had exchanged their vows in the‘70s.
The rehearsal at 5 pm Thursday at the Crystal Plaza was a taste of things to come. We practiced processing down the aisle, Melany’s mom Susan and I practiced lighting the tapers for the Unity candle, Matt and Melany said their vows, and Melany’s Grandma Betty and the groom’s dad Jim practiced their readings.
Grandma Betty’s reading was from 1st Corinthians:
“If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. “
And Jim’s reading was from Madeleine L’Engle’s book “The Irrational Season”:
“To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take…If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation…It takes a lifetime to learn another person…When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected. But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take…It is indeed a fearful gamble…Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature. “
After the rehearsal, my daughter Maeve wanted to go back to the hotel to change into dressier clothes. But, both she and her friend Myrna were both stylishly – if causally—dressed in leggings, boots, tunics and waist-cinching belts, and I said, “We can’t go back to the hotel. I have a rehearsal dinner to host.”
The dinner was at an Italian place called Calabria’s. Melany and Matt had come with me and Jim to check out several places in Livingston in October. Matt liked Calabria’s the best.
When we got there, Melany’s Grandma Betty had already met Matt’s friend from first grade Tony L. Tony is now 29 and tall, but he has the face –and the dimples—of a first-grader.”He’s not hard to look at,” Betty pronounced later.
Matt has told us over the years the story of how Tony L. takes a job each summer in Cape Cod and bicycles to Cape Cod from New Hampshire, eating one meal a day that consists of a big can of tuna and a bottle of beer, and sleeping at the side of the road. Tony had already been fitted for a tux identical to those of the groomsmen, and my number two son Mike said that, if Matt O didn’t show up, they would “ bring Tony up from the minors.”
Tony L. sat next to me at the rehearsal dinner, and we caught up and talked about his mother, father and sisters. On Tony’s other side was the only male member of Melany’s bridal party, her gay friend from graduate school, Tony R. Tony R. began hitting on Tony L. (Tony R. said his name spelled backwards is “Y NOT?”) Tony L. ate multiple plates of fried calamari. I couldn’t tell whether Tony R. was unsettling Tony L.
At another table were my sister Marian and her husband Benny, my sister Margaret B. and her three daughters Hannah (and boyfriend Brad), Monica and Julia (and boyfriend John), and Monica’s three-year-old twin daughters Abigail and Jocelynn. (I can’t get enough of these little girls. Jocelynn greeted me on Wednesday night, saying, “I’m so happy you have lollipops.” And when Abby saw me cleaning on Thursday, she said, “I’ll work with you, Aunt Mary.”)
Opposite my sisters’ table was Melany’s family: Grandma Betty, Melany’s mother Susan, Susan’s sister Aunt Jayme and her daughter Jay-Jay and Jay-Jay’s fiancé Judge John.. This overwhelming female-power family calls themselves the New Jersey Steel Magnolias. We –Matt’s family – call them the “phone chain,” because if you mention something to Matt, all of Melany’s family scattered across North Jersey will know about it within 30 minutes. Their delivery record is better than Domino’s Pizza.
They dress to kill. Grandma Betty gets her hair done every week, in a style I think channels Jackie O. They celebrate every birthday and holiday with lots of gifts, homemade foods and dessert. They are kind, compassionate and thoughtful, and Jim says Matt is clearly marrying “up” by cleaving to their family.
To give Melany some comparison about what it’s like to be a McQueeny, I told Melany about a gift Jim’s brothers gave their late mother one Christmas when I first started dating Jim. With great ceremony, they handed their mother a matchbook, and said, “Merry Christmas, Mommy.” Never one to fuss but kind of bewildered, she said, “Thank you.” They said, “No, Mommy, you’ve got to open it up.” She did and found a folded $50 bill and two scratch-off Lotto tickets inside. A perfect McQueeny gift: One with a joke and a surprise, and readily purchased at the Quickie Mart, along with their cigarettes. When their mother got the joke and the surprise, the McQueeny brothers (then in their twenties) howled with laughter at their own ingenuity.
At the rehearsal dinner, Melany’s cousin Jay-Jay, resplendent in an off-the-shoulder green velvet sheath, said my nieces were so beautiful in an Irish way, they looked like “Celtic Woman,” the all-female musical group created by a director of “Riverdance.” Grandma Betty was every inch a cougar in her shimmery red top at age 86. (Betty was miffed at the bachelorette party in a Mexican restaurant when a Latino waiter addressed her as "Mama." "Chica" would have been more her speed.)
Matt stood up to welcome everyone and Melany wanted everyone to remember Aunt Nora, whose absence was felt, but whose courage was to be acknowledged and emulated.
Jim’s brother Kevin and fiancée Cindi did not make the rehearsal dinner because one of her 4 cats had sprained or broken a leg. (The two of them had also missed our annual Christmas Eve dinner because another cat was having tremors.) Jim had told Kevin, “ I understand that you can’t come to the rehearsal dinner, but there will be no more cat excuses for the wedding or I’ll throw the freaking cat out of the car.”
At the dinner, they were passing around a big porcelain plate with a drawing of a groom on which dinner goers could inscribe best wishes. It took the writer Tom (my number three son, age 17) about 45 minutes to come up with something. He finally wrote: “May your marriage be long and happy and full of awkward blinks,” a reference to Matt’s habit of blinking blankly when he doesn’t have an immediate response to a question, statement or acclamation.
Uncle Robert, Jim’s other brother, said he would draw a noose around the neck of the groom pictured on the plate. He also said he would write the only advice he’s been giving Matt:”Don’t do it!” (Of course, when he saw Melany in her wedding gown, he reversed himself, telling Matt, “Do it!” and adding, right in front of his wife Felicia, “Felicia never looked this good.”(Along with their penchant for odd gifts, the McQueeny brothers don’t have a diplomacy filter.)
About two hours into the rehearsal dinner, Abigail and Jocelynn were starting to tire and cry. At one point, I took one of the little girls and went back to sit at my table. Mel’s mother Susan came to sit next to me, and asked, “ Is that Jocelynn?” I had to lift up the twin’s face to verify .And I silently applauded Susan for her emotional intelligence, specifically her ability to distinguish between the twins. I sometimes still have trouble and I’ve been with them a lot more of late.
About 8:45 pm, Marian came over to my table , told me the hotel shuttle had arrived at Calabria’s, and asked whether Maeve and her friend Myrna would take the little girls back to the hotel and get them into their pajamas and into bed. That way, their mom Monica could stay at the dinner a while longer.
But Monica came up to me about 10 minutes later, distressed that -- when Maeve and Myrna had shepherded the little ones onto the shuttle--, their grandmother Margaret B. had thrown herself onto the shuttle, shouting, “They’re my grandchildren.” Margaret has been a great support to Monica with the twins, but I guess she upsets Monica when Monica feels she oversteps her role.
Next:....Wedding day arrives!
You rock Mary!
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