A Wedding in Lent

Gearing up for St. Pat's and Mike's brother's wedding...those two are so cute and laid back. I've been involved with some crazy brides-to-be, oy, but Mary is the queen of "Whatever," said with a little bat of the hand. They're getting married, get this, on Friday the 13th, a Friday in Lent, at my parish, just as the fish fry ends. My pastor at first told them, "Absolutely not," but then relented (hah) because they were bringing their own priest and in the end, there isn't any reason not to get married during Lent.

Looking back through history, the furthest we can stretch the Fricks back to Germany (Aloysius' family--his great grandparents) involved a wedding in Lent. I hadn't thought about it before, but it was the last week of February, which would be Lent no matter what the year, right? The couple had just had a baby at the beginning of February (this seems to happen at an alarming rate in my family history, actually), and the baby didn't look like he was going to survive. They got married to make him legitimate and he died the next day. That's horrible, yes, but they did go on to have 4 more children. I can only hope it was happy.

Ok, not the most wonderful example, and I don't intend to compare the two. It just struck me finally that yes, I did know someone else (a Catholic someone else, that is) who was married in Lent.

I'm looking forward to it, even though the next day is the PARADE downtown and I have to do hair that night. I'm breaking down: we're getting Sophia a wig before the next feis. She loves shows and a wig will make life just that much easier. Plus, she seems pretty much in for a penny-in for a pound about this Irish dance stuff. It seems like such a waste of her naturally curly hair, is all. Ah well.

So it's a busy couple of weeks coming up. I'll see if I can stay in touch.