Spearfish Wedding and Reception

Just to give you some background, Laura and I planned our wedding around a bike trip; the idea being that instead of people driving to come to our wedding, we would bike to some central locations where we had lots of family and friends. This first post covers the events in Spearfish where we had a proper and very beautiful ceremony in Spearfish, SD followed by a reception for friends and family there. Posts to come will cover our journey and further celebrations in Fort Collins, CO; Spirit Lake, IA; and Redwood Falls, MN.

Adam Ziegler comes down the aisle with his daughter, the flower girl, Taycee.

Laura's brothers, Paul (Left) and Kevin (right) walked her down the aisle.

Derek's Mom, Zindie, reads:

A Map of the World

by Ted Kooser

One of the ancient maps of the world

is heart-shaped, carefully drawn

and once washed with bright colors,

though the colors have faded

as you might expect feelings to fade

from a fragile old heart, the brown map

of a life. But feeling is indelible,

and longing infinite, a starburst compass

pointing in all the directions

two lovers might go, a fresh breeze

swelling their sails, the future uncharted,

still far from the edge

where the sea pours into the stars.

The second reading we chose was recorded by our dear friend Jessie Akos, who couldn't be with us in person that day, as she had just given birth to a beautiful baby boy!

Bicycles

by Nikki Giovanni

Midnight poems are bicycles

taking us on safer journeys

than jets

quicker journeys

than walking

but never as beautiful

a journey

as my back

touching you under the quilt.

Midnight poems

sing a sweet song

saying everything

is all right

Everything

is

here for us

I reach out

to catch the laughter

The dog thinks

I need a kiss

Bicycles move

with the flow

of the earth

like a cloud

so quiet in the October sky

like licking ice cream

from a cone

like knowing you

will always

be there

All day long I wait

for the sunset

The first star

the moon rise

I move

to a midnight

poem

called

You

Propping

Against

the Dangers

Derek's Dad, Kent, shares some words of his own:

The summer Derek was nine he developed an interest in grasshoppers. There were a lot of them around, and he thought he should have a few, so we found him a glass jar, and we cut holes in the lid, and Derek prepared an expedition to the meadow between our house and the creek. Before long he came running back. We anticipated a grasshopper bonanza, but discovered instead, when he got in the door, that his right hand was bleeding—profusely.

He hadn’t discovered some kung-fu grasshopper that considered living in a jar an insult. Rather, the grasshoppers were quicker than he’d anticipated, and after several failures at catching them, he had a good idea. If the grasshoppers wouldn’t go inside the jar, the jar would go outside the grasshoppers. Derek crept up to the next grasshopper he saw, lifted his jar like a net and swung it down, capturing the grasshopper inside.

For a split second.

In the next split second, the jar didn’t exist, since the grasshopper happened to be sitting on a rock.

You can fill out the rest of the story.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be speaking of blood and gore at a wedding. I hope no one’s feeling faint. I should be speaking of love and togetherness, not the groom’s former wounds and failures, and if I have to talk about insects, tradition probably demands butterflies. But there are things that stick in a parent’s mind, and they stick for reasons, and a wedding is a time to wonder about how the past, even in its small ways, is held to the future.

There’s this, for instance: Our lives are fragile: breakable and crystalline, and we—you might say—hold them in our hands, and we move through a pretty wondrous world and collect things—experiences, memories, relationships: grasshoppers. And there are times when, come hell or high water or rocks, you just have to go after a grasshopper. The fullest kind of living may be when you’re sensing the wonderful fragility of what you hold and yet you’re going headlong after your passion.

One of the beauties of a wedding is its sense of fragility. This ceremonial moment right now is fragile—in its particularity, its light, its gathering of these people, all of us here. In another few minutes or hours, it’s going to break, and time will resume, and then there’ll be memories of a wholeness, a thing made and framed and created. And inside that thing, a relationship captured and held, a living relationship that Derek and Laura will carry, together, through the rest of their lives. Time shatters everything. Memory and relationship hold things together. A wedding pulses between these two truths.

This—this moment right now—is your grasshopper, Derek and Laura, inside this fragile jar of a day. Carry it carefully. Find other such moments. Go after them. Point out for each other the rocks.

Derek and Laura make their vows to each other:

To join with you and share all that is to come,
in joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in want, in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish, as long as we both shall live.

PARTY TIME!!!

After some pictures we (around 30 riders) headed out for a cruise around Spearfish. We had a nice ride and got some great looks!

And since we were already on the bicycle, we decided to just ride right in to our reception in the Spearfish City Park Pavilion.

Kevin strangling his (and our) nephew Noah. Because what would a reception be without some good old fashioned horsing around.

And of course there was cake. We had four different flavors (flavours if you're British). Here I (Derek) am insisting Laura try the lemon cake with raspberry filling while she becomes very assertive with some cake of her own.

And finally, there was dancing. Oakhurst played at our wedding (visit www.porchmusic.com for a taste of their music) which was a real treat and Taycee loved them!

In fact, we all loved them. Everyone got out on the dance floor. It was a great time.

So, now Laura and I have been sitting at a place called the Pizza Palace in Burwell, NE for about 2 hours and our computer is running out of juice. We are too and we need to head to our campground and get some Z's before our ride to O'Neill, NE tomorrow. But we'll try to post again tomorrow on the first leg of our journey to Fort Collins, CO. Ciao!