The wedding rehearsal

*I wrote this the night before Patrick and Robyn's wedding almost two years. I love weddings.*

The joy is bottled up like a shaken Coke, ready to burst and explode sweetness everywhere. In casual clothing we smile and giggle and elbow each other at the shadow tomorrow casts on today, a faint imprint of the joy of two young people so madly in love with each other they can only whisper it in case its spell is broken. We are told our whole lives that fairy tales don’t exist anywhere other than in well-thumbed picture books or on celluloid screens, and yet here it is, right in front of us. Though we are not in a wooded glade or the topmost tower of a castle surrounded by magma and kept by dragons, here is true love’s kiss, true love’s smile, a snapshot of a future in which two lives never part. The wedding rehearsal couldn’t have been long, but time wore boots of lead and dragged us through the treacle thick air so as to leave us suspended in this moment of such bliss; for what other word is there to describe times like these? And yet it falls short, as all words do, as the two fumble through their vows which tomorrow will shake and crack in their throats as two bodies come to terms with the earth-shattering moment of becoming one. Every pair of eyes in the room quietly practices what they will surely do tomorrow, though for now we hold it in as best we can. We keep our tears in our eyes and our laughter in our throats. We giggle and jostle and look forward to tomorrow, to gazing on as the miracle of love happens right in front of us; (oh watchers, you are blessed!) We remind ourselves of the privilege of being in proximity to such great love. And as the rehearsal draws to an end, if you look carefully enough you can see tomorrow’s photo slowly develop just as timid stars press through an evening sky. You blink, and there they are in a future a mere breath away. A crying groom, a smiling bride.