Wedding Planner

I have been taking many temporary/voluntary "jobs" in my life, in addition to the only "real work" that I've ever had (teaching, either in school context or privately). I've been a cook [should I say "chef"?] (for up to 50 people) in several retreats we had during college in Brazil -- I planned the menu, did all the grocery shopping and then cooked the food with the help of several people; I was a house-cleaner for a couple of years here in the U.S.; and I've been helping direct a singing group (I did that in Brazil too); but I had never taken the role of wedding planner (just for the ceremony, not the reception, I should add) and this happened this weekend.

Since the young couple, who got married in the city last year but who wanted to have a religious ceremony now, asked me to help with the music, I realized that they were clueless about how a religious ceremony should proceed, so I decided to help them. I suggested that they pick a wedding bulletin, ordered it for them, organized the ceremony, printed out the bulletins and made copies. As you already know, I also played the piano, the flute, and sang (with our group and a duet with another guy).

I'm happy to report that everything went really well. You might be surprised to learn why, though. :) All went so well just because we were dealing with a group of typically disorganized, and extremely late Brazilian folks! We were there early, set everything up, but of course when you're dealing with Brazilians, oftentimes when it's time for the wedding (or any program) to start, most guests haven't even arrived yet! When 6 p.m. rolled in, I was playing the piano for the bridesmaids/groomsmen to rehearse their entrance (in Brazil we call them madrinhas e padrinhos, they don't wear matching clothes and each couple is a couple of padrinhos either of the groom or the bride, and the couple goes to the groom or bride's side). We also tried to rehearse with the flower girl...

This slightly chaotic environment allowed me to be completely relaxed so when the time finally came for the wedding to start (almost an hour late) I was able to play the piano OK and the flute really well. I concluded again that I'm a terrible piano player, the good thing is that nobody was paying attention to the music that was being played, but to the wedding party and bride.

The good part about this experience was "reconnecting" with my flute! I really want to start playing again. I guess that in the absence of someone to accompany me (my husband can only do it if the piano part has chords, which is not the case with most classical pieces) it works OK to play with a recorded accompaniment track, so I'll look for those and go back to playing. Several of our friends didn't know that I played the flute, so it was a pleasant surprise for them to find out.

OK, sorry for boring you to tears with this description of yesterday's activities. Right now we're trying to clean/ organize the house to put it on the market (we may sell it after all), so things are very messy around here and I should go work and not blog. Oh, yeah, today my dear husband baked bread! YUM!