Receptive audiences...

Bells, flowers, limousines and tuxedos - it must be a wedding.

The joy of having both good friends and aesthetically pleasing offspring is that I get invited to weddings, where my daughter gets to toss flower pedals at unsuspecting revelers in the crowd to distract from the nervousness of the bride as she comes down the aisle.

The bridal party for Jennie and Scott shooed me away, whisked my child off for the weekend and made her up like a living Barbie doll, giving her limo rides, little odd jobs with arts and crafts, and letting her eat all the small strawberries instead of cutting them up to go in the cheesecake topping and all those things that make a small child happy in a crowd of busy people.

When I arrived on Friday night, she had already impressed the families enough that there were groans and moans that there was thought, perhaps, that she should sleep that night, as the next day was planned from nine in the morning until late at night - which, as is always the case with an afternoon party, turned out to be early Sunday morning.

On Saturday, I saw her briefly after breakfast before I was ordered to go shower and dress, myself. When next I saw her, she came popping out of the limo like a cork from a champagne bottle and busied herself with primping and preening the maids and the bride. She sat with us through the ceremony, and then jumped back into the limo for pictures and running on the beach.

She returned to me with tales of crabs and windmills, ate a delicious buffet of varied palates and then wandered off into the crowd to blow bubbles at the dancing guests for the rest of the night.

Accommodations were provided for guests at the The Orleans Inn, a historic hotel nestled into a cozy corner of Cape Cod. The feel was homey and cared for and the reception was held on the first floor and in the back deck. Which was good, as the wine and beer was flowing and the music was playing until the wee hours which made a journey longer than a flight of stairs out of the question.

Sunday was a quiet brunch with some of the older crowd (since most of the younger were not awake until later that day), small talk and then a relaxing drive back home.

We returned with new friends, old friends with new contact information, and 3 large beach pails with flower arrangements that filled the kitchen tables by themselves - they made packing the vehicle a much more interesting time than I had anticipated.