Hi there…
So, this Labor Day weekend, El and I went to Asheville, North Carolina for her older brother’s wedding. As soon as I got off the plane there, I saw rocking chairs in the terminal. Her dad (we’d flown in on the same jet from Cincinnati) told me, “Now, this is a bit rural… yet sophisticated.”
Indeed, Asheville is quite a hippie town. Head shops (for tobaccy and wacky tobaccy afficionados alike) abound. Many stores have “karma” in the title. And there seems to be some town ordinance about putting things in the the earlobe that should not be there, like chopsticks and Chap stick. I’m completely serious.
It is quite a good looking town, besides the pierced denizens (Chapstick, shudder).
The wedding took place in a small glen. The musicians played medieval ish music (one of them had a hammer dulcimer) and you expected elves to be hiding under the seats. Rain was approaching from the minute people walked down the aisles so there was a real hint of expectation in the air. People snapped pictures with one hand and held umbrellas at the ready in the other. The ceremony itself was nice (and short!) with some dramatic crashes of thunder in the middle. “I now pronounce you man and ” CRASH BOOM ” wife”.
Then the downpour started.
The reception was at a large house above the glen called the Homewood. The bride was lovely and tense, as I’ve noticed brides can be on their big day. Dancing, cake, lots of vodka tonics with her little brother, who got so trashed that he invented his own language on the way back to the hotel.
Got to meet a lot of El’s family, who she’d warned were crazy but only turned out to be crazy.