love thursday: joy

This past weekend, Marcus and I attended the wedding of our dear friends, Matt and Jodi. I have to say: while I've been to many beautiful weddings and romantic weddings and pretty weddings and elegant weddings, this was, by far, the coolest, most joyful wedding I've ever attended. The ceremony and reception were held at an old fire station -- how great is that?  All of Matt's family (most of whom I'd never met, and I hadn't seen the ones I had met before in almost a decade) greeted us with huge, warm hugs and wide smiles -- they're the type of people who make you feel like you're exactly who they wanted to see at that precise moment. And Jodi and Matt couldn't stop smiling and laughing and beaming, from the moment they greeted their guests before the wedding, up to and including when they finally busted a move on the dance floor afterwards (one of my favourite moments: when Jodi's daughter requested the DJ play Hannah Montana, and dedicate the song to Matt; the brand new family then danced together with wild abandon).

I took tons of photos (my usual wedding present: wedding albums, shot from a wedding guest's point of view), and spent most of Sunday processing them. And during the whole time, I found myself giggling and getting all teary with each photo I worked on. Matt and Jodi are so perfect for each other, and it shows. As I told Marcus earlier, I haven't been that excited about a wedding since our own.

Congratulations, my beautiful friends. The two of you would make even the most strident cynic believe in love again.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone. Please leave links to your stories and images of love, below, and if you're comfortable using HTML, feel free to go ahead and make your URLs "live."  I'm actually going to be traveling today:  my grandmother passed away this past Monday, and today I'm flying to Trinidad to attend the funeral tomorrow.  I'm sure number one on the programme will be to celebrate the joy my grandmother brought to the lives of all the members of her family. 

(For those of you who aren't comfortable with HTML, don't worry -- when I return in a few days, I'll fix the remaining links so that they're clickable, too.)

And on that note, may the love in your own lives make you joyful today.

Song: Pride and joy by Stevie Ray Vaughn