Tradition!

I've been in the greater Boston area this weekend (Boston-Cambridge-Sommerville-Allston) for a wedding. As my significant other was one of the groomsmen, we were involved in all of the wedding-y things: the pre-wedding dim sum Friday night, the square dancing Saturday afternoon, the rehersal dinner Saturday evening, the pre-wedding setup and endless picture taking Sunday morning/afternoon, the actual wedding Sunday afternoon with partying extending to late Sunday night, and the post-wedding brunch this morning. I've never been square dancing before, but it was a lot of fun (aside from the occasional big fat sweaty man who I really didn't want to be anywhere near); it's something I might want to try again.

The actual ceremony was a Jewish ceremony, and as I had never been to a Jewish wedding (or anything else, for that matter), I found it all quite interesting. Because this was an "interfaith" wedding, the rabbi was kind enough to explain what each part meant as it was happening. Weddings strike me as something in which a little bit of tradition is a good thing (circle of life and all), but too much is just plain hokey and impersonal. This wedding had the katubah (Jewish marriage contract) signing, a wedding canopy, poems and blessings spoken and sung by friends, ring exchange, and some nice glass smashing at the end. I especially liked the canopy (because it can be kept) and the glass smashing (because it'ssimultaneously sweet and destructive), and I think I would have been all choked up and teary throughout the entire ceremony had it not been for the occasional god-reference for comic relief. The more personal bits included friends change ringing on handbells, in part because both members of the couple ring bells, but also because that's how they met. For the uninitiated. change ringing is not the same as "tune" ringing; it is a British form of ringing that's been designed to be able to be done on large bells that take a couple of seconds between the "ding" and the "dong." Some pretty neat mathematical patterns can come out of it, but that's another post for another day.

I've also been able to spend some time this weekend with friends who I do not get to see very often, mostly in food-centric events. It amuses me that I lived here for four years and there are still so many parts of the city I know nothing about; this weekend I have gone further on both the red and green T lines (that's Boston lingo for "subway") than I ever have before. On the other hand, some things stay the same. I've written this blog post on one of the computers in the computer lab where I wrote most of my undergraduate thesis, and there's a lady in the corner over there who was in here most of the time I was writing it two years ago.