Paula Jo Mirkle

My niece Paula is now a married woman. Wow, that’s pretty cool. I won’t go into all the “but it was just yesterday when Paula was a little girl” mush. She met the man of her dreams and smart girl, made sure he didn’t get way. Tom is a wonderful man and is going to take very good care of my niece. He is a great addition to the family.

The wedding took place in Van Wert, Ohio. Van Wert is famous for, uh, I don’t know, not being too far from Lima, Ohio, which is famous for, uh, okay never mind. Van Wert is a little Ohio town not too far from the Indiana border.

We stayed the night before in a motel in Van Wert. Dorene and the kids attended the rehearsal. I was supposed to, but didn’t make it. You see, Dorene gave me directions. I sort of listened to them, and sort of didn’t. The part I heard was that the church was right next to a drive-in theatre that had been destroyed by a tornado. I didn’t listen to the part where she gave the name of the church. Why? Because I’m a guy. No, because I knew where that theatre was at. So that’s where I went. Nope, no church here. I ultimately just went to the motel. Dorene’s explanation was that, well, the church was by “something” that had been destroyed. Okay, fine.

We got to the church the next morning extra early for the wedding, because the junior bridesmaid was none other than our very own Anna Lynn. Cameron was not part of the wedding, which is a very good thing, because at some point, he would have ended up trying to swim in the baptismal.

The wedding started with a prologue of sorts, which consisted of a slide show put together by my nephew Jonathon, who is pretty good at this stuff. This day was also Jonathon’s birthday, a fact that Paula took a lot of (evil) delight in. Then came the parade of the wedding party. The last two in were Anna, who was escorted by my nephew Curt, who on this day was not wearing his AC/DC by way of Metallica inspired by Ozzy Osborne circa Billy Idol attire. We were nervous about how Anna would handle being in front of everyone. But on the way down the aisle she gave a wink to Aunt Joyce, so we knew she would be just fine.

Officiating the ceremony was none other than Paula’s dad and my brother, Stu. I wasn’t sure how he’d get through it without tearing up. Hey, this was his little girl! But he did just fine. If he did get choked up, he hid it well. He did a great job officiating the wedding. My dad led the congregation in singing “To God be the Glory.” During the ceremony, Anna spotted Uncle Steve in the audience and gave an oh so subtle wave, that I’m not sure anyone else saw. She completely kept her composure, and did the wave kind of under her bouquet so it wasn’t obvious.

The wedding was just the right length. Afterwards, we gathered in the church fellowship hall for the reception, which Joyce and company did a bang-up job of decorating. Oh yes, then there was the extra touch that Curt added. They had this chocolate fountain, and next to it were several items for dipping into it, such as strawberries, cookies, marshmallows, cake, and fish sticks. Yes, Curt had threatened Paula for a long time about doing this, and sure enough, fish sticks were there by the chocolate fountain. Paula was (mock) horrified at this and they were taken away before someone actually decided to eat one. Anna and Cameron each ate about 3 pounds of chocolate between them, which meant bedtime would not be coming anytime soon.

We eventually made our way to the parking lot and saw Tom and Paula drive off together to begin their new life. Stu wasn’t showing it, but I’m sure this part kind of got to him, because at this point, his little girl was truly grown up now.