festivity: a silly little love song

We have flocked to my grandmother’s house since before I can remember. The women clinked wine glasses into table corners, accidental toasts but celebratory nonetheless. An aunt might laugh at a cousin’s joke before another aunt chimed in to correct some or everyone’s grammar. My mother almost always held a child, one of her own or not, and quietly savored the company as she created french braids on tiny heads per request. The true birthmark of these gatherings looked like a giant basketball player wielding one incredibly small guitar. My uncle, twelve feet tall at the time, entered the room with a booming joke, a beer, and an acoustic guitar so tiny in his hands it looked made for a doll. He started with hymns, letting my grandfather take the lead. Mom would sway, or sing wildly out of tune, or cry, or probably all of these things and all at once. Those songs were from a different time. Something about that kind of nostalgia has a way of making you ache. I ached, too. I sat on the floor of the grown ups’ room, patient but painfully bored. I could appreciate the sentiment, the loving of Jesus, all of that. I just didn’t have to like the way it sounds. They were too sorrowful or too gentle, too timid or too wrathful. At the age of eight I mostly just wanted to clap and twirl. Spirituality fulfilled, we’d soon move to my favorite bit: the ruckus. The hootin’. The hollerin’. The toe tappin’ and lyric killin’. It was in those rowdy, boisterous moments of music that the world felt just right. It was those splintered-strings moments that I remember most.

Friday Night Festivities, as our get-togethers came to be called, became an initiation of sorts. Still the same, old crowd showed up: the chatty aunts, the sweet-spirited grandfather, the sassy grandmother, the buzzing cousins, the uncle- though I grew tall enough to tell he wasn’t twelve feet high. Seven, if you’re a stickler for numbers. Through the years, though, newcomers- such-and-such’s girlfriend or that-one’s school buddy or a stranger from down the street- were introduced on Friday nights. I’m sure they all felt quite at home with the music, the conversation, the filling and re-filling of stem ware. It was easy for anyone to settle right in, get comfortable, and get carried away in the atmosphere just enough to not notice the truth in the room. We are deciding if we like you, stranger girl. You listen to hymns. We’ll be reading too much into what you do for a living.

Turns out the family’s requirements for membership aren’t all so rigid. A lot like fraternity hazing, we might humiliate or mildly abuse you, but we have every intention of letting you join the club. No racists. No murderers. Otherwise, see you next Friday. Bring a banjo and a friend. We’ll get really funky. 

Family Portrait... of sorts?

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Fresh from college, I return to the scene of education for a former schoolmate’s wedding. The church is prim. The people are proper. Naturally, I am uncomfortable. Pews are filled with standoffish strangers who, apparently, know the same couple. I am squished between a friend and an older, stern-faced woman. The sourpuss is squished between control top panties and control top pantyhose. She mispronounces the word forte. I miss the rest of her sentence because her verbal hiccup is cycling like a teleprompter in my head. I wish an aunt was here to correct her grammar or maybe just her attitude. Minutes pass like years. In the few weddings I have attended, I have learned so quickly to hate this wait before the “Do”. The room is quiet as everyone is starting to realize they don’t want to talk to the stranger with whom they’re rubbing awkward knees. I wish my uncle was here to play a song. I realize I’d be thankful for a hymn at this point. People don’t mind rubbing knees so much if they are dancing. More minutes and years later the bride glides down the aisle. The crowd gasps, and this is mistaken as the communal awe, the collective expression admiring the stunning, veiled beauty. In reality, we gasp in desperate gratitude. Two more minutes and I just know the grouch next-knee to me would surely start adjusting undergarments.

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I am getting married in six months. Of course you know this. You’re planning my wedding, idiots.

When I tried to picture that day, all of everybody crammed in tiny chairs and stuffy clothing, there was one part I just couldn’t envision: The awkward knee avoidance, that mind-numbing, slower than molasses wait for the puffy-dressed bride just to hurry up and jog to the altar already. What better way to pass the time, then, that to give The Very Bloggy Wedding a healthy dose of Friday Night Saturday Late Afternoon Festivity? Before the slow drip to the altar, my uncle and a sweet, sweet, suh-weet family friend (Listen, she’s survived a few years of my family. Sister deserves a few accolades, alright?) will play guitar and sing. Not only a familiar comfort for me, their cozy concert is the perfect way to welcome newcomers to the family, hand them a glass of wine, and say “It’s cool. No need for control top anything ’round here”. In good rhymes and in bad, in twang and in hip-hop, the guest list says “I do”.

So far you, my favorite wedding professionals, have given every other aspect of the littlest Big Day a fun-lift. I find myself a little astounded with your all-in-favor-of-funky vote. The music, then, should be no exception. When asked which song he might like to hear come wedding time, the Almost Mister a little too quickly announced that we must play Hootie & The Blowfish’s  rendition of Zeppelin’s ”Hey, Hey, What Can I Do”: “I got a woman stay drunk all the time. I got a woman and she won’t be true”. I may or may not have responded with a quip about Earl eating poisoned black eyed peas in that Dixie Chicks song. Maybe his middle name is Earl.

Clearly we could use a marriage counselor your help with tunes selection. Below are just a few songs a little more sweet and festive than a ball-and-chain  with a vodka issue.

“What I Wouldn’t Do”- A Fine Frenzy

We would leave out the last tidbit about destroyed relationships and depression  and whatnot. 

“January Wedding”- Avett Brothers

Minus the January bit. Oh, Calendar. You are so tricky.

“If There Was No You”- Brandi Carlile

“Won’t Stop” – One Republic

“Here Comes The Sun Again” – M. Ward

Appropriate for love… and selling a Subaru hatchback. 

What songs set  the best tone for this blessed-union-&-barefoot-dancing festivity?  Vote below!