A Wedding Story

One of the qualities I love about my best friend is her ability to spin the most stressful of situations into an amusing story and tell it like it's no big deal.

She find the good in everything, or at the very least, the punchline...

I also love that she is one of the few girls I know who isn't drama. She has no need to make things any more complicated or emotional than they need to be.

Naturally, one would imagine that planning a wedding in a foreign country and in a language with its very own alphabet would have shaken that.

After all, my traditional and in town wedding was horrendous enough to plan, but that's because I'm related to crazies...

Even when their wedding date had to be postponed (a few times), international travel had to be arranged, and the reception venue fell through at the last minute, my best friend kept her cool and good nature through it all.

Talking to her, you'd never know all the hoops that they had to jump through to get their marriage recognized and certified in both the US and Greece.

Being the Greek-speaking one of the couple, her fiancé sorted a lot of the details, and as if that wasn't enough work, he was still concerned about our plans--making sure that our hotel was on the up and up, that we were getting good fares , and that we enjoyed ourselves.

Of course, how could we NOT enjoy ourselves. I mean, just look at where we were...

Unfailingly gracious, both of them (and their families) kept thanking for coming "all the way to Greece" for their wedding and telling us how much it meant to them that we were there especially considering that our life is in a complete upheaval at the moment...

Like we would have missed the biggest day in our best friends' lives for anything. Their wedding could have been over a trough in a barn in Kansas and Hubby and I still would have been happy... nay, THRILLED to be there.

Fortunately for us it was on a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean at sunset and it was gorgeous.

The bride was completely radiant and the groom was so handsome as their spoke the vows they had written in English, then again in Greek.

My best friend was a bridesmaid at my wedding and my roommate at the time. She witnessed the whole fiasco front and center from the arguments over the length of my veil to my mother and mother-in-law competing for "biggest pain in the ass".

Still my best friend's only recollection of that entire process was how I looked the day I got married- the expression on my face when when I walked down the aisle and the quiet, nervous moments she and I shared before.

She and her fiancé ended up catching the garter and bouquet at our wedding, which was extra funny since they actually met the same night Hubby and I did. It makes for a great story at dinner parties, but it's hardly ever the one that she tells.

Instead she tells everyone to story of how happy and amazed and excited she was for me that day. She says that she'd never seen me that calm and peaceful before and she was completely moved by it. Of course, I always took it as more of her good nature.

I've been a guest at my fair share of weddings. I've cried. I've gushed. I've forgotten all about it the next day, but this wedding was different.

I never really understood what she was always fussing about until I saw the expression on her face as they exchanged their vows. I'll never forget how that felt. It was the joy of seeing two people you really, really love so happy and so in love on the most special day of their life...

It was something I'll probably never stop gushing about either.

I love you, "Beppie" and "Ricki", and I wish you all the best and happily ever after.