The BBQ’d Cow Wedding

The entourage of cars and security units trailed behind the wedding car carrying the newlyweds, the granddaughter of the town's mayor and her husband, Lily and Rodrigo. Bennie, the wedding planner with the pixie hairdo, sat in the front passenger seat. Off they sped to the nearby beach resort where the guests and the wedding banquet awaited.

Lily was the eldest granddaughter of the town’s mayor, whom the townsfolk referred to as "Grandma", that's how long she'd been around. Grandma ran the remote coastal town with the same familiarity and care as if it were her own household. She tended to her constituents as if they were her own family, sometimes much to the despair of her own true blood family.

On occasions, in the early morning hours, Grandma Mayor would patrol the streets with her SUV and hand out to late-night city workers all of the freshly baked bread she could gather and buy from her neighborhood bakeries. She was always thoughtful and generous in that way. She appreciated how bakeries in her town would burn the midnight oil so that their early riser clients could have loaves and baguettes spread at their breakfast tables.

Lily had inherited her thoughtfulness and empathic nature and could read the room like a pro. So, when in the car with her newlywed husband heading to the wedding reception venue, she immediately sensed how unusually morose and introspective he was. The word ‘husband’ was still so unusual to her. Would she ever get used to referring to him as her husband, she wondered?

“What’s wrong Rodri?”, Lily spoke out, snapping Rodrigo out of the cloud of thoughts he was swirling in. “Why so pensive?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” brushed off Rodrigo. Then again, he quickly backtracked and admitted, "It's just that our families will be meeting for the first time." As crazy as it sounded, it was true. His whole family lived in Europe and they had flown in the night before, too tired to socialize with anyone, let alone the future in-laws, Lily’s family.

Lily and Rodrigo met when she was sojourning in Spain for a year after she had quit her first proper job back home. A month after they met, he proposed and Lily said yes, not quite sure what that meant or what that would mean but knowing that Rodrigo was a caring human being, he worshipped the ground she walked on and she felt safe. That would be enough.

Lily was the stereotype (if there was anything stereotype about her) tough cookie exterior and soft dough soul on the inside kind of gal. So, when the chance of a life unfolding with another gentle soul like Rodrigo presented itself to her, she dove right in and head-on, not bothering to check the water levels and accepted what might have seemed to others as a rushed proposal.

As they neared the wedding venue, Lily chirped in, "It will be fine," her voice not quite as reassuring as she'd hoped. Lily knew that her posh and elegant in-laws could be intensely demanding but that they loved their son and ultimately, even if only for him, they would fit in and be the most gracious wedding guests, ever.

Rodrigo gave into her reassurances and soon after, they were making an entrance, ushered in by the oh-so-efficient Bennie. It was a beach outdoor wedding and the reception area, a makeshift oversized marquee facing the sea, housed the barrage of wedding guests.

The thing about destination weddings is that, inevitably the guest count drops, or so Lily thought. She had left the wedding planning solely up to her mom, hoping for a small and unpretentious wedding. Lily was not the kind of girl who fantasized about her dream wedding, cake and gown since early childhood. Au contraire, she dreaded the whole wedding ensemble and thought it was all an act, an unnecessary performance and expense.

She let her mother have her way though, hardly getting involved, as she was too far away in Europe anyway. Lily trusted her mother two hundred percent, so there was no need to interfere with the planning and no intention to either. Also, Bennie-the-Wedding-Planner was her mother's new appendage, stoically bearing the brunt of all the more tedious stuff, the pair of extra hands making up for Lily’s wedding aloofness.

Much to Lily’s surprise, as they filed through the set-up of tables to get to the center one assigned to the bride and the groom and their respective parents, the whole makeshift dining area was packed! There was no way that there were any less than four hundred guests. So much for the small intimate wedding.

Lily didn't know most of the guests, as they were mostly Mayor Grandma's friends and her social and political entourage, which were aplenty and that she probably had to invite out of social obligation.

But more than the outlandish number of unknown guests, what struck Lily to her core and just gave her the biggest fit of laughter was the first thing she noticed standing right before the whole display of table arrangements. An oversized, upside-down barbecued cow. Seriously, the whole freaking cow, like an edible trophy on display.

“That ought to get your parents talking,” Lily teased Rodrigo, shifting his body to face the cow. Rodrigo hadn’t noticed the cow up until then, as he was enthusiastically being congratulated by the few friends and family that had made it to the wedding. “What the…?”, his jaw dropping to his knees.

“Oh, your mother really outdid herself,” he joked while laughing uncontrollably. “Ha ha ha! This one is a good one, a communal feast wedding, only you could have secretly mustered this!”

“Rodri, I swear, I had nothing to do with this,” replied Lily, who equally couldn’t contain her laughter. Rodrigo did have a point though, because if Lily were ever to have planned her own wedding, she would have done everything to defy all of the usual conventions, starting with her wedding dress.

Her wedding dress was in fact, although beautiful, anything but white. It was a long soft silk pearl gray gown that gracefully embraced her figure and coquettishly danced with the light breeze that made an appearance all throughout the evening. That was Lily, oozing sass, attitude and style – no effort needed.

The oversized, upside-down barbequed cow further lifted the bride and the groom’s spirits, now all the more excited to taste all of the local specialties that Lily’s mother had incorporated into the wedding banquet.

Lily caught sight of her now mother-in-law’s reaction to the cow, who seemed completely unfazed, unimpressed and had a slight look of disgust on her face.

"Oh boy, this cannot be a good omen," was Lily’s silent retort.

Soon enough, all of the guests were seated and the food was served. At Lily and Rodrigo's table, sat their respective parents together with the groom’s older brother and wife. The pair were in an obviously foul mood, to the point where they couldn’t be bothered to pretend otherwise and were far from being swept away by the celebratory spirits that were in order.

Rodrigo had earlier confessed to Lily that his brother and his wife had been arguing from the moment they set foot in the airport, only finding time for a truce when overruled by their biological needs, mainly eating, sleeping and bathroom time.

“Uh oh,” Lily further dreaded. She had been through the rounds before. This couple, who should have been barred from ever meeting, let alone, marrying one another, could dampen even the brightest of moods up in the heavens.

"Damn, these two! They sure as hell are not going to ruin my wedding night,” Lily mentally scolded them as she watched everyone nervously interact around her table.

Rodrigo and Lily’s eyes met, concern clearly etched on their faces, more so on Rodrigo’s, as he knew what was coming. Sure enough, the arguments between his brother and sister-in-law continued escalating, no doubt fueled by jealousy towards the happy newlyweds and the pair not caring a single iota that they were at the nuptial table, front and center for everyone to contemplate. Lily prayed to the universal gods that the spectacle going on at her table would go unnoticed by her grandmother.

The general amusement over the upside-down, oversized barbecued cow did not lessen the blow nor had it inoculated her brother-in-law and his wife from their bitterness, as soon enough everything turned into a family argument.

Lily could not help but think of how surreal and unfair all of this was. She was livid at how they had the gall to carry on with the quarrel on her night, the particular night in a woman’s life where she was the unquestionable queen almighty and goddess divine before everyone’s eyes.

Her crown had been knocked over and trampled on. From this moment onward, memories of her wedding night would be marred by the argument, with vivid visions of her brother-in-law’s enraged eyes, as if about to pop out of their sockets.

Rodrigo was mortified and Lily could sense that he was about to lose it. So there and then, Lily was faced with two decisions, either she participated in the brawl and told them all to shut up and that they were ruining her wedding night or she could take the high road, stoically endure and ignore the spectacle.

It took all of her willpower but she opted for the latter, drawing Rodrigo into her safe side, gazing into his eyes and pretending it was a one-on-one celebratory dinner between them. She put her hand reassuringly on Rodrigo’s lap and carried on with the dinner, mentally zapping all of them out of her mind and vision. At some point, the family storm subsided and dinner was soon over, the in-laws out of her sight and probably commiserating and licking their wounds somewhere.

"Is this a sign of the times to come?" Lily suddenly started to question herself. On the occasion when her in-laws were supposed to be on their ultra-best behavior, their ugliest side unabashedly reared its head.

“Time for the first dance,” Bennie appeared out of nowhere and whispered into Lily’s ear, causing her to hop off her worrisome train of thought.

The happy couple then took center stage as the band played the first song of the night. Rodrigo held Lily tight as if fearing that she would run away, scathed. Just in case, he was not leaving an inch of separation between their two bodies. His eyes were shimmering with happiness, exuding an air of being the luckiest schmuck on the planet. Lily went along, feeling pampered, loved and cared for, like she had never experienced before. That was enough.

As the night progressed, one couldn’t tell who was having a better time, if the few friends and family that had made it to the wedding or the newlyweds. Ultimately, it really didn’t matter, merriment overflowing through and through (the alcohol a contributing factor), as the evening flew by and all the in-law arguments were long forgotten.

Not too long before dawn took over the night skies, Lily’s feet gave in -- those three-inch heeled sandals she rocked, got the better of her -- and all she needed to do was give Rodrigo a nod for him to know it was time to make an exit and head back to the boutique hotel Lily’s mother had selected for them. Yes, even that detail was relegated to the mother of the bride.

A short ride later, the newlyweds were entering their hotel suite. Rodrigo stopped in his tracks by the threshold of the door and without a word, bent over and literally swooped Lily off her feet. The symbolism of that single action did not escape Lily.

It was right there and then that she decided to say “I do” to herself and her future life with Rodrigo, fully conscious that she had not only married the man but had married her in-laws as well. And by saying “I do”, she chose as a mental keepsake of her wedding the oversized, upside-down barbecued cow, leaving any thoughts of the uninvited in-law quarrels behind.

Would that be enough?