What has been your biggest surprise in an Open Space annual meeting?

[Therese Fitzpatrick]

Felicidades y buena suerte, Fremy. . . y a su esposa nueva, tambien.
(I hope I have correctly recalled that you are a Spanish teacher.)

Last August, we had a wedding at Spirited Work.  The bride and groom
had gotten unexpected advice from their immigration lawyer to marry as
quickly as possible just a week before SW/August 2004.  They asked me
what i thought of a SW/open space wedding because, as the bride put
it, if someone was going to find something wrong with a wedding at SW,
it would be me.  Could that mean she considers me querulous?!  I
immediately said yes and pointed out that the wedding would be in open
space and only those who wanted to come would.

We had a regular SW weekend, with a Thursday evening circle and then
we opened the space on Friday.  The bride posted a topic that Friday
morning on planning the wedding for Saturday evening, which was just
fine because we pretty much always had a party of some kind of
Saturday.  A bunch of folks got into the wedding planning.

I threw an all girl sauna party Friday night in lieu of a bridal
shower.  The men disappeared that Friday evening so they did not see a
few women prancing in the woods au naturelle late into the night.   A
few people that were not a part of the SW event turned up after our
regular Saturday night dinner just to come to the wedding.  There was
cake.   There was bubbly.  Flowers all over the place.  The whole
event was self-organized by the people interested in organizing it and
the rest of us just showed up.  And there were 'regular' marketplace
sessions throughout each day. . . just some of the sessions were about
wedding.

A few folks felt that a wedding didn't belong at SW so they did not
attend the wedding that Saturday evening although they came down later
for the dancing and drumming.  We almost always had drumming and
dancing on Saturday night at SW, with or without weddings.  As a
matter of fact, I don't think our party looked very different than
usual.

Thanks, Fremy, for telling us about your wedding.  Why are weddings
such wonderful things?!  They are, aren't they?

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