Reflection: A Healthy Pastime

This past weekend I was privileged to witness two people coming together as one.  As part of the morning preparations, I was asked to pick up the wedding flowers and deliver them to their appropriate parties prior to the ceremony.   In that delivery was a very heavy arrangement of flowers that was to be hung over the arbor where the vows were to be exchanged.  The lady handed me the large box with the comment, “I don’t know how you are going to hang this but Good Luck!” I responded under my breathe…“Hee Hee, just what I needed to hear.“  

Dressed in jeans and absolutely exhausted from finals week (yes, even middle-aged women decide to go back to school fulltime).  I arrived with floral wire and pliers ready to hang this monstrosity in the center of a light-weight arbor.  Horror of horrors.  Vision #1 -- watch this thing slowly come loose and hit the pastor on the head while conducting the ceremony.  Vision #2 -- watch the arbor slowly tip over from the uneven weight of this THING while hearing groans and gasps as I sank into my chair.  My ONLY plan -- to quickly dissapear out the back gate while lilies and delphiniums were being plucked out of the pastor’s hair.

The beautiful bride arrived with more wire and gardening gloves so I wouldn’t dirty my hands. I kindly rejected them and calmly assured her that everything was fine.   About 30 minutes into the first attempt of hanging this “beast” I motioned over to a friend  and asked "When are the guests arriving?” Panic mode here.  Maybe I could pass myself off as the floral arranger so when guests arrived I could apologize for the inconvenience and pretend I knew what I was doing. I began to picture myself holding this "thing" dangling from a very long pole, FAR AWAY, so that the ceremony could proceed and the photos could at least capture a part of the arrangement.  How bad could that be?  I knew that erasing the pole would be a snap with Photoshop. 

Regardless, I was not going to deprive the bride of her Happy Minutes on this special day. Shortly before the guests arrived, the gargantuan spray of flowers, armed with a mile of thin gauge wire, found itself  beautifully centered in the arbor. Mission Accomplished!  I even had time for a change of clothes and to pick green floral foam from under my fingernails. What a beautiful ceremony it was!  I left with a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that I had been privileged enough be be part of my special friend's Happy Minutes.

Love you Colleen and Hank.

Nancy Jane