When I close my eyes and picture our ceremony, some things are very clear. I hear our ukulele player, making beautiful music as I prepare to walk down the lawn. My flower girls have already sprinkled their fairy dust as the walk over the carpet of leaves that create our aisle.
And then I walk out. The ukulele begins to play the plucky intro to the Israel Kamakawiwo'ole version of "Somewhere over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" as I glide towards the magnificent tree we will get married under.
Our officiant creates a touching ceremony with words and passages of our choosing. One of which will be my longtime friend/school teacher Jen, reading a passage from one of my favorite children's books, "The Velveteen Rabbit". I asked her to be my reader in a handmade card, using a line from her favorite movie "Anchorman" that I reworded into "Will you read from a leatherbound book at my wedding?". I even attached this Ron Burgundy pin from etsy seller Kezzaroo with a mini book I made with a tiny duplicate cover.
This is the passage she will read:
"The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse."You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
The rest is a blur until we prepare to make our exit as husband and wife. Behind our guests, the bagpiper begins a celebratory jig that plays us out and down for a glass of bubbly (being butler passed as everyone walks down the path!)
