Of Moose and Melons: A Faerieworlds/Wedding Story

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the lateness of this post, but we just got home! We arrived in Powell River yesterday morning at 1a.m., wow!

This was my fifth year attending the Faerieworlds Festival (Aug. 1-3), and I have to say that this year was the best year I've ever attended. Camping with all of my FW friends from all over the world definitely put it over the top for me; I really enjoyed the intense community of family that we all put together, and a lot of us had never met in person! That's a hard thing to pull off, for sure.

Ironically, I think the best night was after FW was over! Sunday night, we all converged on our camp for food, fire, and firewater! Thanks to Sammy for creating such an amazing, gigantic curry feast for everyone. And Sammy, Cat and Dede were also pretty liberal with their home-made Limoncello... Yum!

Jeremy & I got a chance to firedance (fire fans!!) together for the first time, and our friend Brandon got a chance to do something he'd always dreamed of: a hoop-strip that had him spinning while disrobing, ending up in nothing but gold lamé hotpants and a sequined bow-tie, lying on his back with one leg extended up, spinning his fire hoop with his foot! Then there was Yona, who firedanced in nothing but my frilly new bloomers! The whole evening was better than any bachelor/ette party we could have asked for. :)

After FW, we went back to Eugene, picking up odds and ends that we hadn't already acquired for the wedding, and then on Tuesday evening, we headed to the coast. A few of my family members were already at Whalen Island, Oregon, the camp ground we'd picked for the event. Whalen Island is an island in a coastal estuary south of Tillamook that just got turned into a nature preserve. It's full of all kinds of waterfowl, shellfish, even foxes - and when the tide goes out, there's sand flats for miles around the island!

On Wednesday, we had a small gathering of friends and family for my birthday, and I firedanced for my family for the first time! And thankfully, we'd even set up a separate kitchen for vegans and those with food allergies. :) Oh, what merriment was had!

Thursday, more people were showing up and we started to scout the location of the ceremony. We saw the sun a couple of times, but mostly low-lying clouds kept the atmosphere cool and mysterious - a blessing, considering how much we'd baked in the hot sun at Faerieworlds! We had a large sail borrowed from a friend that we had planned on setting up as a shade structure, but we didn't end up using it (which turned out to be a good thing, as pretty strong winds came up Friday and Saturday).

Friday, August 8th: The main event!

Our original plan had been to have the ceremony on the beach, but the older folks weren't really up to the walk, so we were going to change to a grassy location by the water... until the wind came up. We found a little sheltered area, almost a chapel secluded among the trees, and set up there.

The ceremony was beautiful: our friend Ariella (who is a musician, trained opera singer, and cantorial soloist) was the officiant, and she did an amazing job writing it with us. She knew exactly what we wanted with very little help from us - very nature-based, loosely Jewish, with emphasis on an equal, spiritual partnership between our hearts, minds and bodies. During the ceremony she passed around a hemp string for everyone to hold a piece of, representing the connection we all have with one another, while she sang three of the traditional seven blessings. I arranged the ceremonial altar myself, with objects that hold meaning to us (a few pieces of which were found objects from FW.) Our flower girl, who was Jeremy's seven-year-old niece, Shira, quite animatedly flung the flowers (that she picked herself) at us. Our chuppah (Jewish wedding canopy) was supported by seven-foot poles from downed saplings, topped with a wool blanket that Jeremy got in the Greek Islands. We exchanged rings of hammered rose gold, made by a wonderful artist from Portland. Most of the seating was bamboo mats and tapestries on the grass. Oh, and the bouquets for the bridesmaids and I were made from lavender, marjoram, roses (for me), basil and mint (for them) and get this: purple KALE leaves and flowers! It fit perfectly with our purple/green color theme.



After the ceremony, we all gathered in Camp Central (my Uncle Sunny's gift to me) and loaded up on vegan root veggie curry (and various meats that my carnivorous family provided), with gluten-free, organic vegan mini-cupcakes from Divine Cupcake in Eugene. The tablecloths for the dining tables (read: picnic tables!) were fabric which my mom will make into a quilt for us.

Once it got dark, Me, Jeremy, and half a dozen of our friends firedanced for the crowd. Jeremy and I did fire fans together again and overall had a pretty wonderful time. There was one time toward the end of the night where I yelled "Ok everyone! Anyone who wants to hug the bride can do it right over here!!". Surprisingly quickly, I had about 25 people all snuggled around me, swaying back and forth, ohming loudly in various harmonies, which lasted a good 5 minutes! :)

Saturday, we woke up to two cases of young coconuts being opened and passed around by our friend Fenicks, who arrived late Friday night. We had intended to stay and chill one more day, but it was getting a little too chilly by then, with rain forecast for the evening, so we all packed up and said our goodbyes. Literally 30 seconds after the last people got finished packing and closed the car doors, it started POURING down rain! Like big, heavy bucket loads. Jeremy and I were having lunch in town at that point, and were watching the raindrops shoot sideways against the windows. What an intense send-off!

The next week was spent in Vancouver, WA getting marriage and name change stuff taken care of, and seeing more family and friends. Ironically, after the cool reception we'd had at the coast, the temperature started soaring, hitting 105 on Thursday. Our Gypsy van started having trouble in the heat, so we took her to a repair shop, they couldn't recreate the problem she was having, so we chalked it up to heat issues.

On Friday, we headed up to Seattle to spend the night with our friend Nora, and on Saturday, just past the border, we got caught in traffic. It turned out that someone had run out of gas on a bridge a couple of miles ahead of where we were, and that's when Gypsy started acting up again. Chalking it up to heat yet again, we pulled off to the side of the road and sat in the shade for about an hour. Once traffic let up a bit, were back on the way, but only for a short while. Traffic slowed to a crawl again once we got onto the bridge, and she finally died going uphill. A very nice traffic guy gave us a nudge to get over the bridge, and we coasted downhill and made our way to a place we could pull off. We waited and waited, but Gypsy wouldn't restart. We stayed with a cousin of a friend there overnight, who was wonderfully obliging, and took us out to eat since we'd spent the last of our money in the car shop in Vancouver, WA. We packed a couple bags of necessities, and took the bus to Powell River, finally arriving Monday morning at 1a.m.

So, our van will have to be donated to charity (everything that would need to be fixed to get her to run and then all the rest that would go into getting her fixed to be licensed and registered in BC just doesn't make financial sense) and all of our stuff from our month-long trip is sitting in a garage in Port Coquitlam, south of Vancouver, BC.

With that said, we're still in high spirits and feeling good about everything that happened. We have to let go of our most wonderful Gypsy van, but it could've happened very differently, so we're thankful that everything happened the way it did. We still have Pixie, our VW Cabriolet convertible, so money that would've been used to fix Gypsy will now be put toward winterizing Pixie.

...And this, my beautiful Foodie friends, is why we embrace Chaos. ^.~*


Blessings and exhausted, chaotic love,
Lyra and Jeremy