Milestones

Carrie Married - There's some reason that those words rhyme which goes beyond the natural. My cousin is one of those people whose destiny and primary ambition it has always been to start a family. Her wedding was two Saturdays ago. I was the matron of honor.

I should explain that when children of our clan get married, they have a choice to make in regards to their representative maids. Two roads diverge in a wood, as it were. There are five of us cousins who are, shall we say, birthing age, and we're all pretty close. So when one of us gets married, it just makes good sense for the other four of us to stand up there and look pretty. Four is a good number; not too many, not too few. The choice comes when one of the brides has other friends that she would also like to have in the wedding. You can't have just one friend-maid, because she'd have to hang out with a bunch of cousins who've known each other all their lives and probably don't know her from Adam. Wouldn't be fair to her. So you'd have to have at least two friend-maids, which now brings your total to six or more. For a family which seems to prefer smaller weddings, this will not do. Also, how many guys do you know who could come up with six groomsmen? We're also into symmetry.

When I got married, I went the friend route. It was a small, outdoor, informal wedding and even four seemed a bit much. I had a matron of honor and a maid of honor and that was it. As a sidenote, I also find it interesting that two of the cousins are married now and neither of us saw fit to designate any attendants as simply "bridesmaids". Equality for all. Hm.

Carrie went with the pre-packaged family plan, and it was a lot of fun. I always wondered if she would turn out to be a bridezilla, but that wasn't the case at all. It was just a good time, even after ten hours in heels. She even gets bonus points for not freaking out when she got mud on her satin wedding shoes.

That makes two down, three to go in our quintuplet of cousinly couples, and all smooth sailing so far. Another interesting tidbit: so far, we're getting married in birth order.