On Football, Weddings--and Tears

On a recent Saturday, my wife and I found out that not everything in urban life has turned sour. We can still be engrossed in some of the old rituals that make America dear. In the morning we went to a high school football game. In the afternoon we went to a wedding. The football game was at Pasadena Polytechnic. The opponents were Poly and the Brentwood junior varsity, for which my grandson Casey plays linebacker and running back, a job that keeps him on the field throughout the game.

Poly was clearly superior. The final score was 32-6, or something like that. There was no scoreboard and I lost count. But there was a lot of huffing and puffing and bruising collisions. The Poly boys seemed bigger than ours, and I cringed whenever my grandson made a tackle.

The grandstand was in the sun and was empty. We sat with a small crowd on benches across the field. Despite the scarcity of rooters, the Brentwood cheerleaders were indefatigable, shouting and kicking and leading yells.

The game was followed by a varsity game for which Brentwood’s varsity cheerleaders, including my granddaughter Alison, took over. I don’t know how that game came out. We had to get on to the wedding.

It couldn’t have been more traditional. It was held in San Marino Community Church. When we entered, the church was filled with organ music: Bach, Purcell, Tchaikovsky. There were enormous bouquets of flowers.

The groom’s parents and the bride’s mother came down the aisle to the Meditation from “Thais.” There was a vocal solo, Grieg’s “Ich Liebe Dich,” and then the processional of bridesmaids, groomsmen, flower girls, ring bearers and ushers. At this point my wife invariably cries. She doesn’t know why. It’s become part of the ceremony.

I suspect it’s the flower girls that set her off. They are so pretty and so innocent in their white dresses and garlands of white flowers. Their behavior is solemn and restrained, but one can sense the mischief in restraint.

Also, she may cry because she is reminded of her own wedding, so many years ago. She may think of the hardships it brought her, and, I hope, of the joy. Perhaps she cries because she knows it will not be all hearts and flowers for the bride. Or perhaps she cries because the ceremony itself is so beautiful, the vows so touching and the hope so abundant.

The bride, dressed traditionally all in white, came down the aisle on her father’s arm to Wagner’s triumphant Wedding March. I attended a wedding a few years ago in St. Sophia’s Cathedral and wrote that the organ had played Wagner’s Wedding March. I was shocked to receive a sarcastic letter from a couple (both lawyers) informing me that Wagner never wrote a wedding march--that I must be thinking of Mendelssohn’s.

Of course Wagner’s Wedding March is the one we most often hear in America. It is played and sung at every wedding in every hamlet across the nation. I believe it comes from “Lohengrin,” but every schoolchild knows that the words are “Here comes the bride, all dressed in white. . . .”

Next came Beethoven’s glorious “Ode to Joy.” The wedding couple ascended to the altar and Michael Horton sang the Lord’s Prayer with such tender passion that it almost made a Christian of me.

The traditional wedding ceremony followed, with two ministers officiating. There was the ring ceremony and then the newlyweds kissed--rather longer than was necessary, I thought, but I haven’t been just married for quite a long time, and I’ve forgotten what it’s like. Then the young couple walked back up the aisle to Mendelssohn’s stately recessional.

The bride, by the way, was Cynthia Camille Varga and her bridegroom was James Anthony Sabin. The parents of the groom were William and Ellen Sabin, and the parents of the bride were Dr. Alexander and Olive Varga.

Of course the father of the bride is a mere functionary at a wedding; theoretically he gives the bride away, but of course modern women give themselves away. But I mention Dr. Varga because he probably paid for the wedding and for the sumptuous wedding feast that followed at the Varga home.

It was altogether a traditional and gratifying Saturday. I would have been happier if Brentwood had won the football game, but most of those boys still have wedding bells ahead of them.

We know it will all turn out all right.

I had too much champagne at the reception, but that’s what I do at weddings. My wife cries.

* Jack Smith’s column is published Mondays.