A Wedding A Month - April Edition

As Promised. I am unsure if one has been opened yet, so I won't post pictures of that yet. Amy & Scott had a fantastic wedding full of excitement and exuberance that I associate with the two of them. The ceremony included (amongst other charming bits):

1. A walk down the aisle to "Be My Baby" - one of our college band's (The Quick & Dirties) most requested songs.
2. A dog ringbearer.
3. A flashmob brass band playing a rousing version of R. Kelly's "Ignition".

I decided it was NOT rude to give a wedding gift to my friend Eli, another Beloit guest at the wedding, 8 months after his North Carolina wedding which I was unable to attend. His bride and he had a farm wedding and I wanted to capture the simplicity and beauty of some of the pictures I saw from the event in a small embroidery. It wasn't until Eli opened their gift at the reception that I found out Amanda had spent months collecting blue Ball Jars for decorations.

The image also reminds me of summer nights of collecting lightning bugs in a jar and watching them blink lazily, on and off on and off, from my bedstand as I fell into sleep.

ON ANOTHER NOTE: (pun intended) A song has been driving me for several months now. It often plays on loop on my computer and when it's not playing there it's looped in my head. When a song acts like a virus in your body, I tend to believe there is good reason for it.

Evidently, I heard it over a year ago for the first time but didn't pay attention. The occasion was a dormitory desk shift with one of my best friends at Interlochen. We were sharing songs that were moving and shaking us at the time- an easy thing for music to do when your heart is primed by the loneliness that ResLife jobs create. I guess that, like I do when I'm overwhelmed with my own emotions, I didn't so much listen to her but wait until I could play her MY song. (I'm sorry, Juliet. I'm working on this.) Either way I did discover the song this winter, just in time. Maybe it wasn't time for me to hear it last winter considering I obviously wasn't ready to listen to it.

The song is Ryan Montbleau's :: "75 and Sunny" Listen to the whole thing through, the sound of it is repetitive, yes, but the lyrics are so potent. One verse is especially important to me:

"And I’ve got a best friend. She don’t drink or smoke like I’ve been known to. She’s got religion. She’s a one-woman dynamo and lights up every room she goes to. She says the light that’s there won’t go nowhere, no way. She don’t spend every second smiling, but she’s learning something exciting every day.

She’d rather be 75 and sunny than 29 with a chance of showers all the time. She’d rather be old as dirt than new as any $9 bottle of wine. Or to be thawed at 35, mama, stoned with her back to the wind. You better believe she’s living for the moment but her moment is the whole damn thing."

I hope people see me, know me and still think of me in this way. I'd like to be known as someone pressing to see the positive in each situation- someone who carries a light that no one can extinguish. Not just an artist, teacher, musician or aunt but an advocate for hope and and good will.