What Kermit the Frog taught me about love
How a wedding in the Catskills reminded me that on the inside, we are all the same
From the moment I arrived, I knew this was going to be a different kind of wedding.
The bride was dressed in a sparkly white dress and carried an oversized white flower. A happy, quirky flower, like the ones you see in a Dr. Seuss book.
She skipped down the aisle to Kermit the Frog singing the Rainbow Connection on a make-shift outdoor audio system. If you don’t remember the song, Kermit played it in the swamp, on a banjo during the opening scene of The Muppet Movie in 1979. The famous refrain….The lover, the dreamer, and me.
Not exactly “Here comes the bride” but okay. Why not a song that was composed for a wistful green felt puppet?
The groom was dressed in a muted version of Kermit green. An open white shirt set off by a green vest and matching dress pants. High-top sneakers tied in big floppy bows added a touch of green to the bride’s ensemble.
As I looked around at the guests seated in neat rows shaded by the large leafy trees, I reflected again. This is a very different kind of wedding.
There was the guy wearing a wrinkled wizard hat. His date had a pixie haircut colored in purple and green and crowned with a garland of deer antlers.
Seated next to me was a person dressed in a sparkling blue sequined dress with a plunging neckline. They had a long grey beard and were wearing army boots with black sox that mushroomed out just above their ankles.
A ringmaster dressed in the traditional red waistcoat had to take off his tall, black top hat so the people behind him could see the ceremony.
And, the mother of the bride was sporting vintage Romani complete with magic slippers she could have borrowed from Aladdin.
I looked down at my tailored black and white dress and tasteful pumps. I realized that in my perfectly appropriate garden wedding outfit, I was the one who looked out of place.
As the afternoon progressed, more wonders were revealed. The bride had been a trapeze artist and traveled on the circus circuit for years. The father of the groom was raised by communists. The mother of the groom had hitch-hiked across America in her early twenties. And, the groom was a prankster with a penchant for masquerading as a specialty spoon salesman in New York City elevators.
My eyes grew wider with each conversation. Who are these people? They are so different than me.
But with every glass of chardonnay, and yes, there were several, I realized that we shared more similarities than differences. We held hands and danced the hora together. We couldn’t choose between blueberry pie or chocolate wedding cake so we took a piece of both. We laughed at the best man’s goofy stories about growing up with the groom and we melted when we saw the father of the bride dance with his beautiful newly-married daughter.
We were all there to celebrate the same thing. Love. The joy of finding someone who “gets” you. Who accepts you and appreciates you for who you are. Inside and out.
Deer antlers and all.