Yesterday my friend Lauren got married. I've known her and her family since I was five or six. It was a giant wedding! There must have been 250 people at the reception. I cried *several* times throughout the day (which shouldn't surprise any of you by now!). For one thing, the Jewish service is *much* nicer than the Christian-esque one. All four parents are involved, and there seems to be far more of an emphasis on the joining of the families as well as the joining of the couple. (I suppose that might be hellish for some people, but in this case it was nice!) The fact that Eitan had to promise to rescue Lauren from bandits if need be is somewhat anachronistic, but hey, if you're going to be traditional, be full-on traditional! Then the reception was in a lovely venue looking over the water in Remuera, and it had all that cool dancing you see in the movies, with the couple on chairs and all the spinning around and being thrown into the air and everything. (My American friends will have to excuse me - this may be totally familiar to you, but the Jewish community in New Zealand is tiny, so it was all news to me!) Plus, I have never been to a wedding in which the speeches were *all* good before. I mean, they were *all* funny, and moving, and succinct, and self-deprecating! When does *that* happen? Most poignant: Lauren's younger brother Shawn died a little over two years ago, at the age of 22, and instead of ignoring him - which would be tempting, because it's so hard to talk about - every speechmaker paid tribute to him in a very sweet way. The wedding was so important because now Lauren is Bernie and Carol's only child - all their hopes lie with her, and the love between the three of them was really palpable. She's such a sweet, caring person and it was clear that a lot of the traditional touches in the ceremony and reception were for her bereaved parents' sake - not that she was unwilling, but it was obviously very important to them that she paid tribute to her heritage. It was a very warm, lovely day all round, and the couple were clearly thrilled and joyful. Top effort, team!

Shallow note: although Lauren's dress was, as she put it in her speech, a 'meringue', it was a fucking nice meringue! Ivory satin, beaded, with some beautiful back detailing, and her veil was pretty too. Plus she looked GORGEOUS. She looked so good that anyone mentioning how beautiful she was in a speech got spontaneous cheers and applause. It was just *nuts*. I hope the photos capture it.

Personal note: we were seated next to a very cool couple (Lauren knows what she's doing!) who we're meeting up with after the David Bowie concert in Wellington. As soon as the Flaming Lips were mentioned we knew things were promising, and when they called Rushmore 'an almost perfect movie' we knew these were our people. (The fact that he doesn't like the Beatles is sheer bloodymindedness on his part, however. Come on, dude - you reel off names like the Beach Boys and the Kinks and then some minor stuff like The Left Banke and then say you don't really dig the Mt Everest of 60s pop bands? Contrarian, I say!) It was nice to meet some likeminded folk.