The McCollumn - 8/27

Another wedding life lesson - 'Taking a chance on love again'

Overly strong margaritas.

More Rick Springfield songs than I knew existed.

A cake shaped like UAB Hospital, complete with a bride and scrubs-clad groom on top.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday night.

I drove to Birmingham late Saturday to attend the wedding reception of my friend Kimberly Kornman and her new husband David Farr.

The ceremony, a small, family-only affair had taken place the previous evening, so this reception was really the only means by which to celebrate the couple’s nuptials.

Folks came from all over, wishing to bring blessings and joy to the happy couple.

As I sat there people watching all evening, I couldn’t help but be struck with a certain amount of admiration and respect for my friend Kimberly.

She had been badly burned by love before, spending years with a piece of lowlife scum who barely deserves continued existence, much more a kind person like her.

Foundations of trust and self-respect had been decimated when I first met Kimberly, a byproduct of that poisonous previous relationship.

During the time she worked up at “the store” for Betsy in Victory Engraving, though, I saw this woman rise up and claim the power and strength to go on and move forward that had lain dormant within her all along.

Inside Kimberly’s soul lies a resiliency and moxie one seldom sees.

Where others may have been content to wallow in self-pity or anger, Kimberly astutely realized that best revenge has always been and will always be living well.

She began to celebrate life, taking the time to appreciate life’s small, random and hilarious moments.

Through the support of a loving family and some pretty darn good friends, she righted her course, the course that would eventually lead her back to a figure from her past.

She and David had known each other since childhood and they just seem to fit, like a worn, old shoe.

Watching them cut a rug on the dance floor or playfully bicker about the cake Saturday showed me a couple deeply committed to one another.

The gazes they shared with one another were those of pure love and adoration, gazes one seldom sees outside of Nora Ephron movies.

I celebrate their commitment to one another and I wish them the best for the years to come.

This is certainly a couple I want to keep up with, to know what they are doing.

You need good couples like them in your life when you’re a single guy like me; it gives a framework and example to shoot for in your own life.

But, we can all take a lesson from Kimberly.

Even if you’ve had been left for dead by love, you have to be willing to love again.

It will take time. You will need to pause, reflect and get to a place where you are ready to love again.

But that day will come.

As the great Dame Cleo Laine says in that old jazz standard “Takin’ a Chance on Love”: “Now I prove again that I can make life move again; I’m in the groove again, taking a chance on love.”

Congratulations, Kimberly and David, for taking a chance on love, one that I’m certain will prove to be a most marvelous choice.