My blog dashboard tells me the terms people write when they come across my blog. Usually the phrases are normal and predicable, like ‘gift to receive’, or it’s an author’s name or some poetry line. This evening it cracked me up to read one search term: is gideon yutzy married.

The question deserves an answer, and besides, other readers have been wondering about it, so even if this isn’t really a newsy kind of blog, I’ll say a little bit. I’d been thinking about writing about the wedding, but didn’t know how, because it was so special and intimate that I didn’t feel like gushing or blabbing about it.

But yes, Gideon Yutzy married my sister Esther just over a week ago.

For a long time, I’ve thought that to celebrate a wedding for only one day isn’t nearly long enough. Now I’ve discovered the solution: the bride’s family must be in a more remote place like Ireland, to ensure that guests arrive before the day. The wedding was Sunday, and the first relatives came Tuesday, with more guests arriving every day after that. Our house was the hub of action to serve meals and socialize. Oh, yes, and to play volleyball in the evenings.

I soaked up the hours of seeing Esther and Gideon surrounded with their friends and relations, eating and talking and laughing. It was as it should be.

The day before the wedding, I cut blooms and buds of antique-white roses from one of mom’s gorgeous, over-flowing rose bushes, and walked down the road to cut flowering privet greenery from a lane. I played with roses and greenery in the sun for the morning and had way, way more fun than anyone else had that day. Esther’s bouquet had a few red roses added to the white ones like the bridesmaids carried. It felt idyllic and right: roses from mom’s garden, greenery from the lane. Less is more, and simple is better.

The wedding was in a lovely old church in the village. You could see the sea from it, and hear the gulls crying. The entire service was weighty with significance, beautiful and sacred, happy and holy. Afterward, I even had a little turn with the bell-pull, but I had a nephew in one arm, and couldn’t manage the rhythm very well.

That evening, our house and yard were alive with people socializing and playing and eating and discussing. I loved it. And I had a priceless conversation with my four-year old nephew about the wedding, the flowers we’d been carrying and where we’d been sitting in the church.

Me: And I saw you and you were sitting pretty close to me, weren’t you?
He: Yes, but why were you crying?
Me: Because I was happy AND sad, and so I cried. Does that ever happen to you?
He (very seriously): No, I’m just happy.