Three Weddings and a Hopeless Romantic

I’ve been to three weddings so far this year. One was held at the bride’s parent’s home, a charming two-story colonial on beautiful grounds. The next was celebrated at a gorgeous venue complete with rose pedals and secret gardens, and the third, which was last weekend, was held at the Tampa Aquarium, allowing the guests private access to the attraction, which by the way was amazing. All three weddings were as unique as the couples taking the vows.

Each wedding conjured romantic images in my mind; Knights on steeds reciting eternal vows; breath-hitching kisses, leading to sleepless nights, where lovers exchange dreamy dialog... “is it the sun or the moon?” It matters not, for the bedchamber’s windows are dark with secrecy and as silent as a fortress, as the hungry darlings, reach for love’s ripened fruit, tasting and touching, pooling like blood into one liquid soul.

Ah me, always the romantic, and thankful for the tantalizing tidbits these weddings have offered; the series of infusions of what has been written of, dreamt of, and sought after by mankind since the beginning of time…epic love.

Seeing those young couple’s eyes swollen with hope; looking as vulnerable as a pair of egg yokes, with their naïve minds confident that they were going to be the couple who would never lose the fireworks, was enough to make a believer out of me. I wasn’t about to break their yokes.




Obviously they’re still on that isolated little island called “Us” which protects them from marital disasters, old age, and even death. They’re still drawing from a wishing well, where happy endings are as certain as springtime blooms, and where love never turns as ordinary as a worn pair of gym shoes.

They’ve been raised to believe in Hollywood’s love; where each story ends with a white dress, champagne, and two beautiful people wrapped in a long embrace. Funny how Hollywood doesn’t show the rest of the story...how breath-hitching passions, dreamy dialog, and juicy midnight fruit pickings eventually give way to morning breath, petty arguments, and intimacies scheduled between work shifts, diaper changes, and the flu season.

I would never tell them about the ordinary trappings of love because I believe in the spell of romance. Romantic love is like the holidays, it doesn’t show up every day but when it does come around, it feels new and exciting, dressed in glitz and gold, and shooting off fireworks capable of obscuring the moody glow of the moon and setting fire to the ocean.