Stratford, Ontario is a place I spent a lot of my childhood in and haven’t been back to visit properly in over a decade. It’s weird to go back as an adult to a place you knew as a child. It was magical to me, with its swans on the river and Festival Theater cannons, as well it was a refuge from the harder parts of my childhood. I got to spend a lot of my time talking to my Mom and re-connecting with all of her family. I got to see my grandmother and introduce her to her newest great-grandchild. I got to look through her wedding album, (one of my all-time favorite photo albums) even though it leaves me tormented in some sort of existential crisis.

And so it was over the weekend: a lot of talk about the past and celebrating in the present of a new couple’s future together.

My family has a short history. I know so little about the family that my grandparents left behind in Northern England (when they were in their 40′s! Can you imagine re-starting at that age?) and I know almost nothing about the family on my Father’s side. That really what’s left of us, has us scrambling to figure out how it’s done properly. I see Dave’s family and I see what it means to have Roots. And all I can do is take his example and put it into practice with my own.

Here is what I DO know about my family: we are awesome dancers (even if we are not necessarily awesome dancers…) and we need MORE weddings to bring this phenomenon to surface more often. (And yet thankfully no one has posted any of this on Facebook.)

I know I haven’t really explored much of what I have been able to say here because I find it too difficult with words. How the heck can you sum up Family in Weekend Recap?

So I will leave you with a question, as I asked my Grandmother over dinner on Friday night: what was the best wedding you’ve ever been to (outside of your own!) and what was it about it that made it so?