{"id":3082,"date":"2011-05-14T10:06:53","date_gmt":"2011-05-14T14:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=3082"},"modified":"2011-05-18T17:04:25","modified_gmt":"2011-05-18T21:04:25","slug":"from-the-brides-fathers-notebook-day-10-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=3082","title":{"rendered":"From the Bride’s Father’s Notebook – Day 10 (part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Inn at Little Washington<\/a> is a quaint collection of buildings in a tiny village (Washington, Virginia)\u00a0with only a handful of houses, a few shops, and really one main intersection, all within sight of\u00a0the Blue Ridge mountains.\u00a0 I think the pastoral setting worked its calming magic on each of us.<\/p>\n

Please indulge this brief\u00a0tale about a\u00a0bit of\u00a0man-of-the-house pride.\u00a0 When we were getting settled and set up\u00a0in the fireplaced room in the small, 18th century cabin that was the\u00a0venue for both wedding and wedding night, my own bride suggested we put my satchel out of sight in a safe place.\u00a0 I proceeded to squirrel it away, not realizing I would be asked for five\u00a0items from it (I love\u00a0being prepared)\u00a0in the next half hour: band-aid, screwdriver, sewing kit, reading glasses, and the one I\u00a0liked best: headlight.\u00a0 I don’t usually carry that very handy light I wear\u00a0around my forehead in dark times of need, but in my worried over-preparing for the day, trying to anticipate all contingencies, I threw it in.\u00a0 When my wife, who in a few panicked moments before the ceremony\u00a0absolutely couldn’t fasten the bride’s dress’s clasp, asked for my help (imagine: the bride’s father in the dressing room and her, though all dressed, still not completely fastened; I felt like a privileged foreign\u00a0dignitary in the home country’s embassy), “You don’t happen to have your headlight, do you?” I was able to be, for a minute, a central actor in a play I’ve mostly been on the fringes of these days.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I don’t intend this to be a blow-by-blow accounting of the event,\u00a0but just observations jotted down for posterity.\u00a0 Eleven people (twelve including the officiant) viewed the joining of bride and groom.\u00a0\u00a0The couple looked young and beautiful and optimistic and strong and confident and maybe slightly bewildered, which is every bit\u00a0how a bride and groom should look.\u00a0 I walked my daughter to the minister and the groom, a moment I had pondered and tried to foresee from when she was only a day or so old.\u00a0 The thought of some so-and-so making off with my daughter had incensed me at the time.\u00a0 I anticipated crawling under a rock afterwards to weep and blubber and mourn.\u00a0 Now that the event was really at hand, I was nothing but supportive and happy.\u00a0 In the days and weeks after the event I mourned the loss, or maybe the change.\u00a0 I’m happy for her, for them, and I think when the dust settles, I’ll be happy for me, too.<\/p>\n

The meal was\u00a0a rich, lush fairy tale of food and service.\u00a0 For a few hours we were the center of that little world of the Inn at Little Washington.\u00a0 The Inn is a world-famous venue with one of the country’s most famous chefs.\u00a0 How to describe the food, the event?\u00a0 While still at the smaller house we were served champagne to toast the newlyweds, then gourmet\u00a0nibblers such as fried Parmesan crisps.\u00a0 I guess you could call it fried cheese, but it was as far from a carnival as you could get.\u00a0 We also munched little appetizers, dainties with bits of fruit or meat or cheese or some odd, luscious combination of flavors and ingredients.<\/p>\n

Then to the dining room, escorted like royalty to our tables, the continuing dream, but not a dream, the real celebration of this singular moment.\u00a0 Before they delivered the first of four courses, we were served little boxes of popcorn with black truffle shavings.\u00a0 That set the tone for the rest of the meal: common food served uncommonly.\u00a0 We had\u00a0salad,\u00a0meat and starch, desserts, cheeses,\u00a0but all were special, all handcrafted\u00a0with care and skill.\u00a0\u00a0Waiters and waitresses\u00a0carried in each course, a little parade bearing eleven dishes of delicacies.\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a0wine steward had selected different wines to\u00a0match the different dishes.\u00a0\u00a0Though not a connoisseur, I enjoyed them all.<\/p>\n

Better even than the food was the talk.\u00a0 All of us around that table told stories about other weddings, how so and so met,\u00a0humorous\u00a0tales\u00a0of family lore.\u00a0 Like the food, we took our time with the talk, savoring the common human, the common family experiences we related.\u00a0\u00a0I recited a\u00a0sonnet I memorized for the event, Shakespeare’s 116th<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Before the\u00a0dessert course, the\u00a0restaurant’s master-of-ceremonies brought out a cute little ice-cream cake, shaped like a small gift box (complete with bow) and served under an amber, spun-sugar dome.\u00a0 Would the coach outside turn into a pumpkin if we dallied past midnight?<\/p>\n

At evening’s end, we were satisfied, all full, not just of food but of satisfaction, peace, gratitude.\u00a0 The\u00a0event was worth every dollar, worth every minute, worth, soaking in like a sponge, drops of joy and\u00a0fun and love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Inn at Little Washington is a quaint collection of buildings in a tiny village (Washington, Virginia)\u00a0with only a handful of houses, a few shops, and really one main intersection, all within sight of\u00a0the Blue Ridge mountains.\u00a0 I think the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[40],"tags":[415,422,404,43,414],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3082"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3082"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3249,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3082\/revisions\/3249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}