The Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — I’ve attended two weddings this summer, both outdoors.

Both involved rain.

And everyone knows the supposed superstitions — rain on a wedding day is good luck, etc. — are only talked about to make people feel better when it actually does dump on that most fateful of days, because for obvious reasons, most people don’t want a soaked ceremony.

But they should.

Both of the wet weddings I recently attended were fantastic ceremonies that, really, might not have been as good or memorable without the monsoonal afternoon showers.

The first ceremony took place earlier this month at the Yampa River Botanic Park. Before the wedding, as clouds darkened outside and rain continued to drizzle, it seemed certain that it would be moved indoors to a local church. But the wedding party proved persistent and stuck with the outdoor setting.

The rain stopped minutes before the ceremony, leading to a gorgeous after-shower glow in the park. And what happened next sounds too good to be true, but there are witnesses: As the bride emerged from a tree-covered area on the edge of the green and began to walk down the aisle, the sun came out through the clouds.

How about that for an omen.

The second soaky wedding was Sunday, on a private ranch near Berthoud. As attendees set up campsites for the overnight affair, we ignored the clouds.

“Those’ll blow over,” I said to a friend, thereby ensuring that the clouds would dump like firehoses. And dump they did.

But not until after the ceremony, when people had just sat down at the spread of outdoor tables filled with flowers, finger foods and champagne flutes.

Then the skies opened.

There’s something about shared obstacles that brings people together.

All the disparate factions of wedding guests — bride’s family, groom’s family, friends — hauled tables and chairs, saved flowers and food and moved the whole shindig inside. Jokes were cracked about why, oh why, we waited until the very end of the process to move the kegs. Exactly how much rain will you brave to keep your glass filled?

The wedding dinner inside the ranch’s main hall was a steamy, wonderful mess. And when the skies cleared in time for outdoor speeches and a live funk concert, you couldn’t have asked for a prettier night.

If there’s ever a lady foolish enough to marry me, here’s hoping for a little rain on our wedding day.