Ringing in the New Year

New Year’s Eve has Never Been My Favorite.

I am not a huge fan of endings nor beginnings. Both represent change, and I am change adverse. Which is dumb… but whatever. So, New Year’s Eve often leaves me feeling a bit meh.

This meh feeling has been magnified the last several years, because New Year’s Eve is when we first found out mom was sick. This year marked 5 years since doctor’s discovered the growth that turned out to be pancreatic cancer. 2019… just me, mom, and dad in an emergency room at the University of Washington Medical Center. We listened to nurses toast the arrival of 2020 in the hallway, as we sat with the news of an accidentally discovered suspicious growth.

And what a year ahead 2020 was even without the added layer of mom’s cancer!

But life didn’t let me stew on this anniversary on New Year’s Eve. Instead, we attended a wedding.

Weddings are funny.

Marriage is hard work. Even when it is a good marriage. So, it is funny to me to watch young couples making promises of love with a naïveté of what lies ahead.

I don’t know if I really appreciated the strength of my own wedding vows until the last few years. It is one thing to hear your spouse say that they love you. It is another for them to hold you up when it feels like your world is imploding. (Or to see them carry your dying grandmother to bed after she collapses unconscious on your bathroom floor.) These things you would never imagine on your wedding day, but demonstrate your wedding vows in action decades later.

So for me, there was a certain amount of self reflection in watching our young friends get married.

But there was also joy!

The whole event was beautiful. The ceremony was at a Catholic church on Mercer Island (a suburb just east of Seattle). They held their reception on an old ferry boat in the heart of the city. The boat was also moored at the perfect spot for viewing Seattle’s New Year’s fireworks.

^{The reception venue was the MV Skansonia, an old ferry permanently moored on the south end of Seattle’s Lake Union.}

^{Inside the reception venue.}

The reception dress code was “black” black tie. Everyone was wearing black gowns, sequins, velvet, tuxedos and dark suits. Except for the bride who wore white and the groom who changed into a white tuxedo jacket for the reception. Even the couple’s wedding cake had black frosting with white flowers!

^{The table settings, cake, meal and a table of New Year’s party supplies.}

The couple’s first dance was to the Ellie Goulding version of “Your Song”. This song was most famously sung by Elton John. However (and coincidentally), the Ewan McGregor version from the movie Moulin Rouge was the song my husband and I used for our own first dance.

^{The happy couple.}

^{Us and the groom.}

We didn’t quite stay until the stroke of midnight. Though the wedding reception continued until 1am, we snuck away around 11pm. However, we got into the spirit of the celebration before making our exit.