Last Saturday my baby daughter got married and boy did that make me feel old. I always told my kids that ceremonies are powerful and important moments and my Kleenex consumption over the past week certainly bears me out. It started Tuesday night when we cracked a bottle and the bolshier of the bride's sisters made me laugh till I wept with her take on Special Occasion make-up artists. Like me her preference would be to wear a large paper bag over her head. At all times.

More tears of laughter Friday night when the sibs gathered for dinner and my son kept any wedding eve nerves at bay with his surreal banter. Every bride should have a brother who can do funny voices.

Saturday I moved on to the other kind of tears, blown away by the beauty of my daughter, by the vows she and her husband made, by the affection her new family clearly feel for her. I cried to see her wearing my mother's pearls and the little scrap of Graham tartan ribbon wound into her flowers just as it had been for my marriage to her father, thirty six years ago.

They weren't leaving for their honeymoon till Monday so Sunday night they called by for a cup of tea and a blow-by-blow. Maybe they just realised how flat a Mum can feel after her baby just got married. Anyway, idiotic as it is when a couple have been living together for years, waving her off on her honeymoon felt like an enormously poignant moment. Another milestone in the building of a family. A preliminary sketch, you might say, of how it will look when we old folks are gone.

Never got to taste the wedding cake either. Dang!