The past few months have been very busy with - strangely enough - a wedding!
Due to the Supreme Court ruling for gay marriage, my cousin and his partner of a decade were finally getting hitched and they went all out; thus, my aunt bustled about assisting with preparations that my cousin could not while in London.
Since the wedding was "B" themed (the letter, not the insect), Gloria enlisted my help in making 5 "B" pillows - one for my cousin and his partner (who is also a "B") but also for me and my two sisters. Earlier this year, we had gone through all of my upholstery fabric and picked out the same fabric but in five different color swatches and coordinating backs. The fronts were made of a bone-hued linen which I had colored a unique "B" using a grey fabric marker. I had originally tried to paint the linen using a paper template, but it looked far too sloppy for such an elegant affair. In the end, I finished them with a couple months to spare - a luck feat, too, because by August and September, I would have been far too stressed to devote much time to complete them.
The surprising thing about big events like weddings is who shows up. My cousin seemed rather surprised that so many of the Sampsons were coming. My sisters even flew in from Alaska with my nieces and my sister's fiancee. I like to think it was a glorious show of solidarity and support for the grooms.
During one of our visits to the farm, Gloria had a fashion show in order to find something suitable to wear for the wedding. Naturally this led to a bit of a question of what
Robinson was going to wear to the wedding. We ended up making a run to the Janesville Mall to shop for a new "casual-comfortable-formal" outfit for him. After an hour, we left with a knit blazer, new long-sleeve button down top, and jeans. Arthur even left with a new straw fedora that he wore all the way home.
I won't lie. I had a bit of a freak-out, too. In the end, I attempted to do my best impersonation of a 1950's starlet. (My goal was Marilyn Monroe, but the hair didn't quite work out as I would have liked. I fully admit that hair styling is
not one of my strengths.) The idea was a really good one, but the whole dress came together by accident.
I purchases a black petticoat on Amazon the weekend before the wedding, planning to wear it with a black polka-dotted dress. When the petticoat finally arrived, I tore open the package and tried on the ensemble only to discover that that particular dress was simply not going to work. I tried on almost every single dress in my closet before finally settling on a green polka-dotted one...but it needed more. I could pair it with my black Oka-B flats and a black and white pearl necklace, but it was still missing something.
On a whim, I went to Goodwill and found a thin black belt and black vintage gloves. Hoping these would pull the rest of the outfit together, I tried the entire thing on and BINGO! It worked! (So, for my dear readers who do not accessorize, you should seriously consider it!) In fact, I received many compliments on my outfit throughout the evening. It was a real self-esteem boost!
For the boys' outfits, I made them bow ties from Liberty-print fabric printed with little flowers and animals and paired them with yellow shirts and jeans. They looked adorable, don't you think?
(A little side note about the difference between boys and girls: my nieces wore their beautiful matching purple dresses to lunch...and left perfectly clean. If my boys had worn their yellow shirts and bow ties, they would have been brown when we left. I'm not saying
all boys are like this...just mine. Whenever I dress them up, it has to be no more than five minutes before we leave otherwise they trash whatever it is they're wearing.)
Not only were the kids dressed in matching clothing, but Dad and Dustun came as twins, sporting similar jackets and striped shirts! (Coincidentally, Dad wore almost the same shirt as Robinson did the night of the wedding for the brunch the next day.)
In many ways, it was the usual wedding: unique venue, pre-ceremony cocktails, catered dinner; however, there were a few no-so-typical additions: a professional baby-sitter, gigantic vegan cookies in lieu of cake, and a rainbow piñata filled with Skittles and Starbursts.
The ceremony and reception took place in Chicago at Salvage One, a brick warehouse filled with up cycled and vintage furniture, games, and knickknacks and decorated with at least a hundred Bs that had been collected for the past year. The boys, of course, wanted to climb over and jump on the furniture (though with most pieces being well over $300 in price, we had to insist that they not). It was a touching ceremony and so filled with love.
After dinner, we danced. We ate giant cookies. We drank. Molly and Robinson danced. We took pictures. We talked. Blythe and Arthur played Skee Ball. We admired some Han Solo in carbonite bathroom tiles. My cousin attempted to dance with Balin (he refused). Wayne and Maureen complimented our dancing. We finally caught the grooms and the photographer long enough to snap a couple of pictures. We chatted with Gloria for a few minutes before she had to circulate among the crowd. We missed our bus and caught the next one an hour later, leaving the party well after midnight. Arthur fell asleep on the bus. Balin talked about Paw Patrol the whole way back to the hotel. I could barely keep my eyes open.
The next day my cousin and his new husband had rented out a 4-car CTA train for a 2pm brunch complete with bahn mi and leftover giant cookies.
Since we had some time to bum around Chicago, we took the boys to the Children's Museum to play before catching the train.
The boys had ridden a train before - last year during our December visit to Chicago. They spent the entire train ride looking at the urban landscape from the window. This trip, Arthur spent most the train trip permanently stationed in the conductor's car, waving to the other passengers waiting on the platform. Balin, of course, lost interest in the view after a generous five minutes, but in that glimpse of Arthur, you saw a possible future occupation and a life-long love of urban transportation.
After brunch ended, we convinced everyone to accompany us to Dak, a Korean chicken wing place. Brian had taken us last year and Robinson raved about that place for weeks afterward and insisted we return this weekend. Their wings come in few flavors, but are well-seasoned and come in huge portions. I'm not a kim chi fan, but theirs is more palatable than others I've eaten. They also had vegetarian options for my sister.
We headed back to the Magnificent Mile for a little mall walking after saying good-bye to Dad and Becky and her girls. The boys received stamps in their Lego passports and a gift from their auntie.
As we left the mall and started toward our hotel, it dawned on me that - despite Chicago's size and diversity - I was probably the only person wearing dangly ivory earrings, carved by an Alaska Native artisan. I may live in the Midwest now, but I still cry when I hear the powerful beat of the Arctic drums. The urban landscape still feels foreign after all this time and I find myself missing the black-and-white birch with their papery skins.
It's hard to leave a part of your past behind, isn't it?
Still, those ivory earring mean I don't have to ignore or forget about my past. It just means I'm still adapting to this place and figuring out where I fit in to the Lower 48 lifestyle.
