Their Labor Was Truly One of Love

We knew it was going to be unconventional. We figured that out when my brother said yes, indeed, he wanted my three young daughters to be in his wedding: One would be the flower girl, and the other two would carry the broom--as in “jumping the broom,” a black American wedding tradition.

But there was plenty of cleaning going on . . . right up until the moment the bride headed down the aisle.

For days before the wedding, while the bride was assembling her trousseau and the groom was finalizing honeymoon plans, their family and friends were engaged in a marathon of mopping, scrubbing, hauling and fixing, aimed at converting an ordinary house into a wedding chapel extraordinaire.

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It must have seemed like a good idea last fall, when my brother and his fiancee moved into their new home, a stately Colonial with large, airy rooms and a huge backyard.

Why pay for a fancy hall or expensive hotel to stage their wedding and reception? Why not celebrate with friends and family right here, in the comfortable confines of their New Haven, Conn., manse? They could save money, keep the festivities family-centered and low-key, and show off their new home, with its hardwood floors, huge picture windows and cozy kitchen.

Never mind that they had little in the way of furniture, that their backyard was mostly overgrown grass and trees, and that the house was sorely in need of a coat of paint. They were in love, and anything seemed possible.

So they hired musicians, a minister and a photographer; rented tables, chairs and eating utensils; arranged for a giant tent to shade their backyard. They hired a caterer to make a few main dishes, enlisted friends to provide the rest, and invited their extended family--henceforth known as “the work force”--to come up a few days early, to relax in anticipation of the big day.

When my family--the first guests to come in from out of town-- arrived four days before the wedding in June, we were greeted with big hugs and a bigger “to do” list . . . with nothing crossed off.

That was the bad news. The good news was that we could choose from all manner of chores, from planting flowers and digging weeds, to moving furniture and mopping floors.

The next few days passed in a blur. I spent endless hours on my knees--planting and mulching, weeding and pruning until my back ached and my hands bled--trying to coax from their yard some resemblance to the flower-shrouded setting they’d envisioned when they first said, “Let’s get married at home!”

In the kitchen, crates of vegetables were piling up as friends delivered the ingredients for the reception repast. We had to round up a secondhand refrigerator--my sister spent all night cleaning it out--to accommodate all the eggplant and mushrooms, lettuce and carrots, strawberries and pasta salad and deviled eggs.

We didn’t know quite what to do with the 40 pounds of potatoes my brother had bought; it was 40 potatoes we needed for the salad, not 40 pounds.

The morning of the wedding it rained and we panicked. Then it stopped and we began to sweat. The temperature soared and there was no air-conditioning in that charming old house.

We dashed out and bought half a dozen window fans, only to discover that the cut-rate painter who’d come the month before had somehow sealed the windows shut. The bathroom window shattered when we tried to pry it open.

By afternoon, it seemed we might be overwhelmed by petty problems--the kind of unexpected calamities that you can’t call the manager to correct when you’re staging a wedding at home.

The upstairs toilet overflowed, a bottle of olive oil broke and splattered the kitchen floor, somebody’s kid had a nosebleed on the living room sofa.

It was 30 minutes to the wedding’s start, and I was trying to mop the kitchen floor and polish the flower girl’s toenails at the same time . . . still wearing the T-shirt that had served as my pajamas the night before.

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The ceremony went off without a hitch, my girls held the broom as the bride and groom held hands and jumped over it. There was indeed something magical about watching the ceremony unfold beneath the canopy of trees that line their yard.

But ultimately, we realized, my brother and his wife could have rented a country club for what it cost to put on their simple at-home wedding, what with the cost of landscaping and painting, rental furniture and home-cooked food.

It might have been easier on us all if we’d just shown up at a fancy hall and left the cleaning and caring to someone else. But would it have felt so special, without our sweat equity invested in their big day?

After all of that, it wasn’t really the house on display that day; it was our love and good wishes that showed in the blooming flowers and polished floors--a wedding gift of caring kin and kind friends to launch the couple on their way.