Megan woke up this morning a married woman.  I woke up slightly dazed.  I couldn't sleep last night till well after midnight, trying to recall the events of the day.  Megan said the same.  She and Jeremiah stopped by this morning on the way to Miami after spending their first night together in the same little house the bridesmaids had the night before. Mike had offered for them to drive our car in place of their truck and Jeep.  (The clean white car looked a bit like a chariot as they drove away.)  Our only real contributions to the wedding have been service.
     He got up this morning to have us all clean the inside and outside of the car perfectly.  He also hauled the greenery that thankfully I was able to craft together all day Thursday for table garland the way I made wreaths years ago for his tree lot. I consider it a gift that when I finally went out to play in the two feet of snow from last weekend, I came up on the ten foot top of a holly tree (still covered in berries) that had broken, so I drug it to the house to use.
      All the sisters met us Friday morning to set the arrangements out on the table runners Mike's mom made, with centerpieces of bowls and large wooden candle pedestals his dad made and vases full of cranberries and cut white poinsettias that I had seen online and put together, placed atop cedar cuttings my dad had prepared, walnuts and tea candles dispersed over the eleven barn wood tables.  Once the glass and silverware were placed with the red cloth napkins, it looked nothing less than exquisite. Then, there were the eleven display tables to fill.
     But first, before it all began, we came together in the center of the "barn," held hands in a circle and took turns praying.  It was spontaneous and real.  Miranda, who called the prayer, went up to the loft and turned on the playlist I'd prepared, and we went to work, all day, leaving just in time to change and come back for the rehearsal and bbq dinner.
     His three sisters and Megan's four all went to the little rented house to spend the night, went on a midnight run to Walmart, and were up doing hair and makeup at 7 am.  Melody had their makeup photo shoot quality, and McKala made their hair into luxurious braided crowns and curls. Unfortunately, they were not ready themselves when the photographer arrived.  Nor had Madalynn, 10, gotten to have false eyelashes like the big girls and was moping.  Since Megan had already treated her to a pedicure and long manicured nails with them Thursday afternoon, I gave in and called Dad because I knew he was stopping at the store.  Next thing I know, he's calls me back, standing in front of the eyelash display of all lengths and colors, making sure he was getting the right ones. The thought of it was pretty charming.
      When it was time to put things in vehicles, I decided to change into my boots because snow melt was everywhere. What girls were left got up in Dad's giant, white, covered, dually truck that they'd been transporting things in, and I climbed into Mike's little Toyota hunting truck, floor length dress and all.  But soon, they turned off into a parking lot.  Megan had left her veil!  So, I drove back to get all 10 feet of it with it's Latin flair (that she had bought with her dress, not far from the Texas border on deployment) and arrived at the venue 10 minutes before the 2 pm scheduled ceremony!  Needless to say, the cowboy boots stayed on, even though I'd told everyone else theirs couldn't.
     In no time, Michael, our now 20 year old, nearly 300 pound O lineman was escorting me to my seat.  Very soon, after Macklynn escorted one and Madalynn the other, I had a lap full of 18 month old twin.  Mom had the other.  The girls all dressed in white toile barely made it to the front, much less to stay there. I had pacifiers and snacks in my pockets, along with Kleenex and my glasses and a comb and lipstick.

     And then the violins cued Megan in.  She looked majestic.

     I think the particulars of the wedding were so important to her, because normally she's found working on or driving something.  She wanted to be a "girl" for a day, and, boy, she pulled it off.
     The ceremony itself is a bit of a blur to me, except that they both were visibly moved during the vows and during Pastor Kevin's thorough explanations of marriage and how the wife ought to prayer over her husband when he can't.
      We were shuffled outside into the mist to start pictures.  Inside, the quests had access to a bar of hot chocolate, coffee, and apple cider alongside a display of milk and cookies both grandmothers had made and manned, Lauren Daigle's Christmas album playing all the while.
      I was struck in the picture taking when all  seven of our children were lined up with Megan in their gray tuxes and red satin dresses, and no one looked small anymore, not even Madalynn.
      We took the babies in for casual clothes, so I didn't see but am told Megan and Jeremiah used the snow covered hill and fog as their backdrop.  She wanted snow.  Man, did she get it.
      Megan came into the kitchen just as we were getting the babies in the playpen or maybe just when the Chicago style pizza was being delivered.  I can't remember.  Either way, I never left the kitchen. We needed to bustle her two layers of train, the way they taught me in the store, 18 buttons and thread hoops to find!  Thank God, Kaitlyn stayed to help after she changed the babies with me.
      Somewhere along the way, I decided to run out and get a bottle of Mexican Coke at the head of the pizza and salad buffet and take it back to the kitchen, where I rolled up a slice of hot pizza (not without dripping grease down my dress). It seems like it took forever to eat it, maybe because I knew there were people I should be talking to.  I was away so long that apparently there were people I completely missed before they left, never even saw to begin with.  I didn't know until afterwards that Franklin Graham's wife did indeed come. Neither did my friend, Heather, who just found out it was she whom she "laughed and talked for quite a while" with. (It says something for Mrs. Graham that she never revealed who she was.)
     Mike came to me while I was in the kitchen and told me of the talk he and Dad had just had.  They hadn't spoken in over a year and a half.  Dad extended an olive branch.  Although onlookers were afraid it was not so, it was.  And the anxiety that had haunted Mike every day had melted away.  He and I stepped outside into the cold to "breathe." It was surely a reprieve from the sweat that had been running down my back.
     When we stepped back in, I heard music, the "wrong" music, as in it wasn't on the "playlist" I had carefully and painstakingly put together in hopes of honoring the Lord in our celebration.  I was told it was because Jeremiah and Megan were lingering too long in conversations.  Truth be told, I knew that weren't really wanting to dance to begin with; just not their thing.  However, somebody finally turned on the father/daughter, mother/son song.  My peace was momentarily removed when I instead saw Jeremiah and Megan dancing to it!  Melody quickly notified Mike, so he stepped into his rightful position, asking for the dance.  His boldness found a good place there, since they were soon in tears with each other.  I looked beside me and so was our great friend, Heather, who had come through for us again and made the bouquets and boutonnieres.  She was weeping for the healing that was happening right there in front of everyone's eyes.  I looked to my other side to another of our great friends, Shannon (who had been flown in from disaster deployment just to be there), as she was recalling how things looked for the two of them only a year ago.  And there I was with lasting, true friends in the Lord, who had flanked themselves on either side of me.
      The intended song for Jeremiah and Megan came on, but they weren't out there.  I was suddenly alerted to a situation occurring.  Madalynn had gone to Miranda in an outburst of tears with fear that Mike would not live so that she might dance with him at her wedding, so she wanted to dance with him right then.  I scanned over, and there she was, a river of tears as he cradled her head in his arm, dancing.
     I had planned, and even sent a little line dance to several people to learn, hoping the songs and dance would be well pleasing to God, to set a new standard of fun.  But I think emotions were so deep, both good and for others bad, resisting any rightness in the occurring circumstances, that it all just fizzled out, even when I made a call for folks to come up.  Too, the ambiance was just really good: what seemed like hundreds of candles glowing, stomachs full, and conversations boisterous.
     I let it go.  I had predetermined not to take it personally.  To be honest, just the preparation, the singing and dancing I did on my own has welled up a joy and vitality in my spirit that I intend to continue.
      So instead of dancing, I pulled up a chair to my brother's table.  I hadn't seen him in a long time.  He's had a stroke and another during major surgery.  Even so, he and his family stayed afterward to rinse plates, babysit, and to do anything else they could.
     At whatever point, Megan was just plain ready to leave.  We passed out tubes of bubbles to send them off, but not before I got to talk with a beautiful pregnant woman of Pakistani heritage, who is a friend of the groom's mother and had flown in from Dallas that morning, about how much she loved the reminders in the preaching and beauty of the room.  There were people from all over, a young man from Washington state, who was a volunteer in Key West where Jeremiah and Megan met: some of Jeremiah's family from California and his childhood friend and groomsman from Alaska and another friend from Maryland, and plenty of others from up and down the East coast.

     There, just like that, it was done!

     Everyone automatically went into cleanup mode.  A certain person we didn't even know named Daniel from Tennessee, his sister's escort, helped as much or more than the rest of us, as well as having done the organizing of the pizza in the kitchen.
     Timothy, our six foot six son-in-law, and Michael, six foot five, were taking down the four trees from where the vows were made.  It was intended to look like the outdoors with heights from 12 feet to 5.  Dr. Miller kindly provided them from his tree farm (along with all the boughs I used for the tables), the same farm Michael was the foreman of a few summers back and the same farm that Miranda made wreaths for a few Christmases ago.  Dr. Miller had ridden up with Jeremiah and Megan the week before to hand pick it all.  Dad had made and brought up from Georgia old fashioned stands for them.
     The music came in handy for the setup AND the cleanup.  Everyone gathered their valuables, the sentimental things that'd been passed down or made: all the wooden things not only Pop made but Dad also, Mamaw's punch bowl, Cleo's silver platter, McKala's things from her own wedding, everyone's crystal, nativities, and vases, the pine cones Megan gathered on deployment in Panama City where she only got back from December 3rd and the Redwood ones a Samaritan's Purse volunteer mailed her from California and the ones her Grandmother collected from our hometown in Georgia, Megan's childhood Flexible Flyer sled that'd I'd gone through thousands of pictures to find snow ones to display on, together with the winter ones Jeremiah's mother sent of him.  A special one I had enlarged was of him as a boy, loading Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes onto a small plane.  I was able to come up with one of Megan and Melody processing shoe boxes in Boone, NC, the original site.  I know there are others but there are still thousands more pictures on USB that I couldn't find time to go through.  Besides, there aren't pictures of the first year we packed shoe boxes from home in Georgia.  Megan called me recently when a question was asked at work, "Where did the first shoe boxes go?"  She knew, the only one in the room that knew.  She remembered what she put in it even.  When we moved to North Carolina, she volunteered as soon as she was old enough, 14, in the shoe box facility, the only one at the time.  Her brothers and sisters followed suit.  Macklynn will be old enough next year, and he will be old enough to go on disaster deployment, with an adult.
     His parents, Mark and Michele (gotta love that it's so close to ours, Mike and Michelle), staying at his apartment (and cozied and stocked it before flying home) left with the gifts, the top of the cake, their girls, a lot of the tuxedos, and I don't know what else.  Pop and Memaw needed to get back to their hotel room and soon back to Georgia.  Memaw is not well but was more concerned that she couldn't stay longer since Mike's not doing well.  Her eyes misted over not only for this but for the way others chose to go about the occasion.  I hated to see her leave in that condition.  Just before she did, as Heather approached to ask what else she and two of her devoted daughters could do, Memaw said to her, "I don't have a best friend, but if I did, I'd want her to be just like you."  Wow, did she get it right! 
     When we found ourselves gathered in groups chatting, someone realized we were through.  And we had a big round of applause! We all went home with the leftover pizzas and drinks, a nice reward: that no one would have to cook the next day.
      Mike, Michael, Macklynn, Madalynn, and I came home with five 16 inch pizzas, cookies, dressings and (family caught) salmon -  dip Jeremiah's mother made, tea Megan made herself to her own specs, and the second layer of the four layer alternating key lime and vanilla cake an SP coworker's wife made, no less beautiful or tasty than a professional's.  I felt compelled not to throw any of it away and, in so doing, did my part in consuming these things over the past five days.  Thank goodness it's gone, or my dress (I have already washed the oil and mud out of and put away) will not fit for the next wedding.  Mike and I barely got it on for this one - up 15 pounds from the last one!
     It didn't help that most of us, including Megan, caught a cold at the wedding, and that it's my PMS week.  How easy it is to fall off the wagon, if for nothing but food!  I should say that if only the cold, some parking deviations, the smell of a banned substance, and a lost, likely stolen, valuable are all that went wrong, it went well!
     By Wednesday, I could finally see the countertops again.  Jeremiah's family were back home in Alaska safe and sound by then also.  We only had them over once for dinner during their 8 day stay, but I don't think I could've added in one more thing.  It was certainly nice to finally meet the woman who has been reading and cherishing several of the very same books that I have here in North Carolina over these years.  When Megan was there on one of her three visits, she sent me a picture of a particular stack of books one night that gave me chills, and I knew we were on to something, that Jeremiah had been raised up under teachings of the best kind, by Mike and Debi Pearl, that Dr. Ed Wheat had been an influence in their home, and that the Ezzos, as controversial as they were, found a place in their house too, with practical, sensible ways of training babies.
 
      Today, Friday, the 21st, I think everyone is settled back in from their labor of love and waiting for Christmas, which Miranda and I were saying yesterday seems like a downhill slide/easy street after the last week.  Mike is back to hunting deer and coyote from his rocking chair by the heater in his blind. Michael is working for Dr. Miller at the veterinary office and on farm calls during break, while we puppysit his three month old beagle, Lucy, in the basement and outside when it isn't raining.  Melody is waitressing and finishing up class at the community college.  Miranda and Timothy are each doing their work.  Macklynn and Madalynn are closing out their online semester today.  And McKala is bringing up those babies.  But Jeremiah and Megan are on their way back after a night of gale force winds and waves trying to port after having been to Cozumel.
     And here's the thing: Megan, the eldest sibling, has always had everyone's back, but now someone has hers.  And I don't know where they'll be going together (both being SP employees now), but I know she won't be going it alone anymore.

     And, THAT really makes me happy.