Yesterday, at about 6:30 PM,
there was a nice wedding ceremony,
at a public park,
North Linwood Park,
here in Wichita, Kansas.
My new bride, Tonia, and I,
attended.
We got married, ourselves, on October 25th, 2011,
about a year and a half ago.
I live blogged our wedding:
Liveblogging our wedding
We've said our vows.
I cried,
as I repeated the vows,
as the pastor led me through them.
So,
our own wedding was fresh on our minds,
as we watched this one.
More,
below the divider doodle:
Less than a week ago,
I bought Tonia a new dress;
it's bright pink and orange horizontal stripes,
a sun dress,
with the top part a stretchy tube top,
and smooth fabric going down,
forming a full length dress.
It has shoulder straps
that button in,
making it easy to put on,
and simple to wear with no straps;
just unbutton them and leave them at home.
She was excited about wearing the dress to the wedding,
but we realized,
she had no good looking shoes.
We went to a Pay Less shoe store on the way to the wedding,
and we dipped into our savings,
and bought some great shoes,
white,
with rose shapes on top.
After we bought them,
we realized,
from a poster on the window,
that they're bridal shoes.
Who cares? They look great.
We got to the park,
and realized,
that we had to drive our little 2003 Mazda Tribute,
four cylinder,
up a trash dumpster ramp,
and across the grass,
to get Tonia close the the park shelter building
where the wedding was set to take place.
(Tonia has bad knees)
There are several rows of bleacher type benches,
facing the building,
making it usable for such things.
When we arrived,
I parked off to the left side of the bleachers,
and we realized,
we could stay in our car.
So we did.
The weather was great,
muggy, but not overly hot.
There was plenty of food,
deli meat sandwiches,
and coleslaw and potato salad.
The crowd may have been less than 100 strong,
but Tonia kept pointing out the various cousins,
and there was plenty enough cousins there
to make me lose track
of who was the mother of who,
and who had 11 kids?
Oh,
I almost forgot:
I'm an old white man,
and Tonia is a relatively light colored black woman,
light from her Irish great grandmother.
I'm part Irish; it shows in my Andy Rooney style eyebrows.
I have very little contact with the family I was born into,
so I see myself as a member of Tonia's black family.
But the idea that the group of cousins at this wedding was,
overall,
a black family,
might not be totally obvious
to an outside observer.
There were numerous lily white redheads there.
No one is more white than a redhead.
Plus several generic white folks like me.
The bride was light black,
just like her cousin,
my wife, Tonia.
The groom was white,
but Tonia said she thinks he's a Mexican.
And,
the redheads were from the bride's side of the family.
I could explain,
but President Obama's family tree is similar,
so,
most of you should already know:
just as the President has many brothers and sisters,
but none by the same two parents:
that's the case with so many of my wife's cousins.
It's not odd that a man who looks like my wife,
as far as color,
and has a family like my wife's family
is President.
Black,
light black,
redheads,
Irish,
all together,
at a wedding.
This is America.
It was a nice day.
Thanks for reading.