Today is our daughter's wedding. It feels amazing even to say it out loud. Our entire family and five score friends have boarded planes and packed bags, taken off work and stood in security lines to convene on the top of a mountain in Vermont at the peak of autumnal glory. 

How does it get better than that?

Her groom knew two years ago as they hiked on these Vermont mountains that he wanted to marry her. So it was that on another mountain out west, he asked her. 

She said yes.

John will perform the ceremony, and one of his piano pieces will be the prelude. It is a song that cascades down the keys like a waterfall over rocks, then swirls around benignly as if the stream happened upon a pool. After a minute or so the music gets excited and starts crashing again. 

Surrounded by that sound, and those leaves, our daughter will sweep down the aisle like a calla lily, following three bridesmaids who have known her since childhood, swishing in champagne silk skirts. 

She will be crying. 

Just in case it is chilly, as well it could be, there will be a dozen lap quilts, all designed by the groom, for close friends and grandmas to tuck their hands under. After they are pronounced husband and wife, the couple will walk back up the aisle, smiling into the faces of their favorite people. She will be crying again. Maybe him too. 

The tables will have bowls of freshly picked apples, and hurricanes lamps for when the sunset wicks away the light.  Wooden signs will remind guests where to go, and small white cards with a delicate font will explain where to sit. 

Then the food will arrive. Luscious entrees, and bright green salads, so that everyone can taste what it feels like to be fed. By food. By friendship. By commitment to one another. 

Then the dancing will begin. People will kick off their shoes and boogy. Because joy does that to a person. And when it happens to a whole bunch of people at the same time it is pretty epic. 

This week their anticipation has ripened. The groom expressed it this way.

"I can't sleep. I can't think. I can't wait."

And as of today, he doesn't have to wait any longer.