I just realized that, as of yesterday, I have attended one wedding per year for
the past three years: Lynn and Zephyr in 2023; Gabriel and Lea in 2024; Tammy and Erin in 2025. Side note: these three couples could not possibly be more different from each other. Well, among White Americans, anyway. Prior to 2023, I hadn't been to a wedding since Britni and David's in 2019, and not only are those two already divorced, Britni is now engaged to Carlos. To be fair, there were no weddings at all for a couple of years there because of covid; it's fairly likely there'd be one or two more I've attended without a pandemic occurring.
Tammy is my paternal cousin. Aunt Penny is my dad's sister, the fourth-born out of five where my dad was the youngest. Tammy is the only child Aunt Penny ever had, and she was born in 1974, if I recall correctly. My memory is that she was two years older than me. And when we were kids, for a couple of years there I declared Tammy my favorite cousin, before Jennifer overtook that spot and ever left it. Tammy and I are Facebook friends, and we see each other at family events—she and Erin come to family holidays at Dad and Sherri's now more than they even used to, especially things like the New Year's Day gathering that they extend to the extended family. In our adult lives, though, Tammy and I have hardly ever been close.
But! We've still been around each other once or twice a year for most of our adult lives. And Erin is an interesting figure, a really tall, huge guy who would be easy to stereotype as some kind of redneck buffoon on sight—he doesn't even have teeth. He literally went through the ceremony yesterday without teeth in his mouth (as did Aunt Penny, who, back when she did bother wearing her false teeth, used to suck them in and out of her mouth just to gross me out). But Erin in particular really challenges stereotypes, particularly of the uneducated working class. Erin, having married into a family (as in, my extended family) that is broadly very conservative, has been wildly outspoken against President Fuckwit on social media, constantly posted in support of Kamala Harris and how important it was to vote for her, and not only has been nothing but incredibly kind and friendly to Shobhit and me, but even outspoken in support of queer rights—he and Tammy came down to Seattle to watch the Pride Parade (we did not meet up). All of this made me feel very supported by them, which was what made it feel important to me that we show up for them, at their wedding. I'm not sure it would have been all that important to me otherwise, just because, as I just illustrated, we simply have never been all that close.
It turns out I was not the only one to feel so supported by them, and thus felt it important to return the support: they asked Valerie (quick recap: Valerie is the late Auntie Rose's daughter, Auntie Rose having been Grandma McQuilkin's sister, making Valerie my dad's first cousin) to take the wedding photos for them. Valerie has far better camera equipment than any of the rest of us put together—which is to say, the rest of us just have our phones; Valerie has a large camera, an adjustable flash on top of it, a tripod, the works. I must say, she worked harder than anyone else at that wedding yesterday, and was truly on top of it when it came to getting requisite wedding photos. She was so busy it was exhausting just watching her; I think I saw her take a break only briefly once, to sit for a few minutes
at our table to have some food.
It was kind of hard to tell how Erin and Tammy thought the whole day went. Erin spent a lot of time helping put things together before the ceremony, as they were clearly relying on friends and family to put this all on—it was a low-key affair compared to most weddings, no readily identifiable hired professionals (Valerie was the one who kind of stood out on that front, and I would bet she did it on a volunteer basis). Tammy was in a room behind a closed door until the ceremony started, of course, although the door was often open and I could see
Valerie just inside it, taking tons of pictures of Tammy who was around the corner behind the wall and out of sight. When she did finally come out, her gown actually was quite beautiful.
Anyway, it's pretty clear Tammy and Erin love each other very much—they've actually been together ten years, and they got married the first time in April of 2015. I overheard Aunt Penny later, saying that the first wedding was "more for friends and less for family." But, within a couple of years they legally divorced for no reason other than being married barely put them over the threshold for getting state medical coverage for the medical condition Erin has. (I forget what it is, but he posts every once in a while about infusion appointments, I think maybe in some way cancer related. I should ask him to clarify sometime; I'm certain he'd happily tell me.) It seems they both have relatively decent jobs now, and I suppose that must mean they can get health insurance as a married couple, because being in a better financial position again is what made them decide to get remarried, and this time have a bigger wedding ceremony.
It sounds like Erin works for a towing company. A coworker friend was there, I forget his name, but it turned out he was the one driving the tow truck ahead of us as Shobhit and I were driving up the road toward Floral Hall in Forest Park, in Everett—which we had driven to from Mimi and Steve's house in Mount Vernon yesterday morning. We had no idea the tow truck was actually a wedding guest. When we saw it, I joked, "Maybe Tammy's getting towed!"
Something else I learned yesterday is that apparently Aunt Penny is living with Tammy and Erin—and, apparently, Tammy and Erin don't get along very well. Sherri kind of amused herself by baiting Aunt Penny into complaining about him, which appeared to be very easy to do.
Shortly after the cutting of the cake, Aunt Penny came up to me and said, "Handsome husband!" I wasn't certain who she was talking about, and I said, "Who?" She pointed to Shobhit and said, "Him!" I laughed. "Oh, thanks."
But then I added: "I wasn't sure if you were talking about him or Erin." Aunt Penny immediately said, "Oh
god no! He's a pain in the ass!" I'm not sure what being a pain in the ass has to do with whether or not someone is handsome—and of course at a wedding, it's pretty typical for such talk to be about the groom—but it still cracked me up. To be fair, Shobhit was wearing a tie and a suit jacket, making him probably the most formally dressed of all the wedding guests.
Earlier, I had a conversation with Dad and Sherri about how Tammy had married her first husband
on the beach during the 2009 Family Reunion. Dad and Sherri were misremembering, thinking it was then that Tammy had married Erin, but as already noted, there was no extended family at Tammy and Erin's first wedding, which was ten years ago. The wedding to the first guy, which clearly did not last long, was 16 years ago. And I figured out from my Flickr tags that the first husband, who I remembered was much older than Tammy, was named Ed. Aunt Penny confirmed this, and then said, "He was an idiot!"
Okay, then. Ed was an idiot and Erin is a pain in the ass. Got it!
We also met Erin's two young sons, apparently from different mothers (neither of them Tammy, who has no children), I forget their names but you could sure see from their faces they were related to Erin. Ditto his sister, who went out of her way to show Shobhit and me a wedding photo on her phone of her lesbian daughter's wedding. It was a little bit of that typical thing of someone saying "Oh you're gay, I also know a gay person!"—but, it was also sweet, especially as it was one of her own children, and she was clearly very proud of her. She also was apparently just happy that her daughter found someone who makes her after a marriage to a husband who apparently sucked.
I expected the ceremony to be brief, as Valerie had told me they were supposed to be out of the venue by 3:00—and the ceremony started at 1:00. And the ceremony was indeed brief, as was just about everything else. We were sitting to eat by around 2:00, and Dad and Sherri and Shobhit and I were all called outside in the middle of that by Valerie when she was ready to get photos of Tammy with the bride's side of the family—Aunt Penny, Dad, Sherri, Shobhit and me being the only ones of whom who made it. I had expected to see Jennifer there but she told me she "didn't RSVP soon enough" and so was going to visit Matthew's parents on Anderson Island instead. This made me think the wedding guest list had been all booked up, but it appears Jennier just used that as an excuse to do this other thing instead, largely because she usually has to say no to
that invite due to having other plans. But, There couldn't have been more than 50 guests, and there was a lot of empty chairs. Shobhit and I helped collapse them and stack them to return to the venue shortly after 3:00.
In fact, at some point during the ceremony, someone decided the front row of chairs was too close to the podium, and picked up all the front-row chairs and moved them to the back. This was clearly unbeknownst to the wedding party, who had hidden the rings under two chairs, one on each side of the aisle, for someone to find and become an impromptu "wedding bearer" during the ceremony. Someone found the ring on the other side pretty quickly, but it took a couple of minutes for the one on our side to be found. It got to a point where we were told the ring should be in the second row, which was where Dad, Sherri, Shobhit and I were all sitting. We lifted up all the chairs and there was no ring. But then Dad lifted the chair in front of him—which was right next to where Aunt Penny was sitting, the only one in that row—and it was there. It was actually now in the first row, because people had previously moved the front row to the back.
Anyway, this was why Dad got up and handed Erin the box with the ring in it, which is what you see happening in the photo at the top of this post.
As for the food, this was a little bit tricky too: prepared sandwiches as well as platters with meat slices, cheese and grapes were set out, and I helped in setting out some of them. All of them had meat, so Shobhit didn't touch any of them. I took some of the cheese cubes and grapes, just taking some that hadn't touched meat. Having meat anywhere on the tray makes it a no-go for Shobhit. They also had tamales, though, which had been getting heated in the kitchen ovens; Shobhit helped take those out. There were three kinds of those: chicken, pork, and cheese. So, Shobhit and I did have cheese and vegetable tamales to eat. I had
three of them and Shobhit had four. They were from a local bakery (it seemed odd that a bakery would be making tamales) and they were quite good, probably better than any of the few other tamales I have ever had.
The cake was all right. Nice raspberry filling. Shobhit resisted getting a slice because of the points, and when he asked me if it was worth it, I said, "Not really." If it had been amazing, I would have said yes. As it was, it was fine, but nothing to write home about. Better was the design itself: the cake was undeniably very pretty.
Shortly before we left, I signed the wedding guest book—the second guest book I had signed in the same day, actually; as Mimi keeps a guest book in their guest room in Mount Vernon.
Shobhit and I headed out not long after 3:00. It was probably around 3:30, I would guess; getting everyone out of the venue by 3:00 was clearly not happening. The biggest reason we arrived as early as we did was because Valerie had texted to ask, and said she might rope me into helping her with the photography stuff. That never happened, although I also never explicitly asked if she'd like help with anything, which I should have done. I feel a little bad about that. And we could have stayed a bit longer, but Shobhit was ready to go, and for once I kind of was at the same time he was—we're about to see Dad and Sherri again today for Easter anyway. I'll also see Valerie again on Tuesday next week, when we hike up Tiger Mountain for my Birth Week.
The wedding, overall, was lovely. I'm glad we went.
[posted 10:02am]
