belated notes from a wedding

In August I went to the wedding of a dear friend, someone who's like a daughter to me--a treasured part of my family. She was the tall one's first girlfriend (if you look for a tall teenager with a much shorter teenager in this slideshow from more than a decade ago--that shorter teenager is her).

As it happens, the person she married is a woman (a wonderful woman who seems like an *excellent* life partner). In the marriage ceremony, the couple expressed gratitude to those who had come before t...