What makes a beautiful wedding

    Last weekend Tom and I drove to Rochester, New York for the wedding of our niece Tracy to her fiance Chris.
    It was a beautiful wedding in a beautiful old urban Catholic church, Blessed Sacrament, built in 1911 and located in a neighborhood of  ornate Victorian houses well on the way to gentrification.
    But what made this wedding so beautiful wasn't:

The breath-taking stained-glass window that dwarfed the organist:

   
Or the wood and gold-leaf altar flanked on either side by two side-altars:

Or the antique leaded-glass windows between the main body of the church and the narthax:

    What made the wedding so beautiful was:

    Chris and Tracy, who walked down the aisle hand-in-hand.  Which was sweet.
    And who couldn't let go of each other's hand or stop smiling for a moment during the ceremony.  Which was also sweet.

    We weren't permitted to take photos during the mass, and so no one was able to capture the image of them sitting next to each other on the altar with their hands entwined.  But they looked so happy and  natural together  that it almost seemed as if they were unaware that their hands were entwined.
    The sermon of the mass was, appropriately, on joy.  At one point the priest gave Tracy and Chris the commission to spread the joy they take in each other to the community around them.  It occurred to me that they were doing that today.
    The joy carried over to the reception, which was at the beautiful Webster Golf Club:
   

    The food was delicious, a balsamic vinaigrette salad followed by a buffet of roast beef, chicken in a creamy sauce, roast beef, tortellini with marinara or garlic cream sauce, oven roasted potatoes and vegetables.  After dinner there was a coffee, tea, and hot chocolate bar, complete with flavored coffees and whipped cream for topping.  The hot drinks were  were served in fancy tall glass cups.
    Instead of a wedding cake there was a wedding sundae bar with assorted ice-creams and toppings, which was wonderfully  refreshing and when you think about it, doesn't a wedding ice-cream bar as an alternative to cake  make sense since everybody's really in the mood for something cool with all the dancing going on?  

    And dance we did!

 

    And  I even got to do something I always wanted to do at a wedding: form a conga line! (I think I was on an ice-cream-sundae high). Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next wedding I'm invited to so I can get another conga-line going.  Though I guess to pull off a conga-line the ambiance has to be just right.  Which it was at this wedding.
    So we ate and drank and danced and celebrated Chris and Tracy.
    Who only had eyes  for each other. 

    Which was what really made it a beautiful wedding.