I went off yesterday to a wedding. A camp wedding. It was the second best wedding I've ever been to, and yes, I do keep track of these things. I want to say it was great because the bride was beautiful and the groom was handsome. I want to say it was because Melissa and Yves, bride and groom, are so close to me and it was a joy to see them married. I want to say all of these wonderful things and not comment at all on my being able to tackle the high ropes course after breakfast this morning. But I did tackle the high ropes course, so there you have it.
The ropes course at Camp Hilltop, the camp where at the wedding took place (and the camp Melissa's family owns), is a thirty-five foot high course spanning some four-hundred feet of distance and we ran across six distinct challenge elements. First was the climb up the initial tree, with handholds that spaced further apart the higher you climbed. Next came the multivine, where we walked across a cable, supported by a long rope suspended from a top wire. That rope dipped down and crossed with another at the mid-point, which we switched to to reach the end. The hardest part here was keeping my feet under me (the trick: lean forward slightly). Third was the Mongolian Steps, a series of 5 wooden planks suspended from a line by triangles of rope. The challenge here was a challenge of reach, as we had to stretch ourselves between the different steps. The course got easier from there, with a simple catwalk (balance beam) and burma bridge (tight rope with guide-cords) and then the three-hundred and fifty foot zipline. What a blast!
Don't think, though, that the weekend was dominated by the ropes course. It wasn't. But the ropes course is a good example of why Melissa and Yves' wedding was so nice. One small sample among many: held at Melissa's family's camp, with guests staying in camp cabins; rope belayed by Melissa's father and zipline run by her brother; decorator, chef, photographer and band all old friends of the family; the bride and the groom stayed in the dining hall (come-banquet-hall) until the soft hours to talk with their friends and then met us for breakfast (and ropes) the next morning.
And the speech, God but if the best man's speech wasn't the second-best I've ever heard, too. Delivered by a French friend of the French groom in some of the hardest-practiced, most sincere English I've ever heard, because Frederick wanted to be sure he got it just right, it hit every note. The speech was just a little embarassing, but never baudy; it was wry and funny, as Frederick explained that we need not worry, no matter what we had heard, Yves wasn't actually French (he was never late, for one, showers every day and doesn't like wine); and it was always deeply personal.
And there's the key to the success of the wedding: everything had a personal touch, every element made us feel at home. We were never rushed, never felt out of place. We didn't have to ferry ourselves from site to site and we got to spend some good quality time with the bride and groom.
If I came back with a strangely inflamed bug-bite and a black-and-blue mark on my foot, that's just the price I pay for the second-best wedding I've ever been to. After this, Rob and Katie have a lot to live up to.