Natural nuptials in the park

Vacations mean fun, food, family and a few extra pounds. Except that one vacation.
First, when I went to visit my mother and visiting sister and nephews, I discovered she had not stocked up on her usual supply of snacks. She and sis were on a diet.
I ate fresh fruits and green salads with my mother and sister before sharing blackberry pie and cobbler with the children.
Then we went to visit my mother-in-law who’s been on a health food kick since about 1932. If we want something else when we visit, I can buy the ingredients and fix it, but that cuts into time for visiting. So, we were sitting down to eat natural peanut butter on whole wheat bread with a fresh garden salad and skim milk when my niece stopped by with her fiance.
He smiled shyly while she chatted about their plans for a unique natural wedding at the park in the morning. When she said friends were making bread for the reception, I anticipated the end of my unplanned diet, “Who’s making the cake and decorating it?”
“All that white sugar is not good for you. We aren’t having a wedding cake.”
Crushed into silence, I listened as she described a lunch buffet of fresh vegetables, build-it-yourself sandwiches and fresh fruit.
The next morning, a hesitant mist sifted through the branches of green leaves to the empty chairs facing the small log cabin in the center of the park. I huddled under the pavilion with the other guests waiting for someone to say “Plan B: Go to the church for the wedding.”
With her father beside her, the bride arrived in an open carriage pulled by a horse with an Amish boy at the reins. She wore a white, beribboned peasant dress and a hesitant smile.
The mist became a scattered shower. The bride ran to her mother, tears merging with raindrops as the clouds washed away her plans. While her parents consoled her, we prepared to go to the church, until her father announced, “We will give the weather a chance to clear. We have decided to have the reception first.”
At 10:30 a.m. the guest ate lunch while the bride and groom stood off to the side watching the clouds.
I couldn’t figure out what to say at a wedding reception for a “still to be married” couple who would not be cutting a wedding cake or sharing glasses of punch. I re-acquainted myself with relatives and had seconds on everything. Except wedding cake. There wasn’t one.
Eventually everyone was full. The tables were cleared but the skies weren’t.
The bride yielded to nature. We went to the church for the wedding.
It was a lovely wedding. As the communion was served, a beam of sunshine pierced through the clouds and windows, blessing the couple at the altar.
The guests were invited to a second reception. I thought about it, even if they didn’t have cake, but we did have a long trip home. I chuckled all the way back to Arkansas about the reception before the wedding.
Home again, I weighed myself. I had lost five pounds. Believe me, I tried. I ate everything I could, but I was younger then and it was the only time everyone was eating ‘right’ except me.