A beautiful day to dance at a New Albany wedding

About 200 guests celebrated a wedding Saturday afternoon, May 2, in downtown New Albany.

Jessica Stokes married Jason Kidd in a 4 p.m. ceremony performed by Rev. Tony Proctor. The party afterwards in The Basement, a recently opened venue immediately next door to the Tanglefoot Plaza, was probably the biggest party in downtown New Albany so far in 2015.

Newlyweds Jason and Jessica Stokes

Many friends gathered into the Basement to wish the couple well.

The guests ate, drank, danced, laughed and visited well into a perfect late spring evening with soft air: not too hot nor too cold and no humidity. Most of the guests were still present when the 99%-full waxing gibbous moon came over the north Mississippi horizon at 7:30 p.m.

The pretty bride Jessica Stokes Kidd is a surgical technician at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Union County and her husband Jason Kidd is a nurse at the same hospital.

Jennifer Madden Howe and her father businessman Frank Madden.

The bride and her friends.

Gilbert Stokes is a great uncle of the bride, as is his brother, long-time New Albany grocer Mose Stokes.

The most energetic dancing was done by a Lauren Overstreet, a small girl, whose natural, untaught rhythm and grace astonished those who watched her spring and whirl around the dance floor. Unselfconscious, but giving all of herself to the music, she evoked life itself. It was a happy start to what we hope will be a long happy marriage for Jessica and Jason.

The bride’s mother LaJune Cook and the Tiny Dancer, Lauren Overstreet.

Watching Lauren, it was hard to avoid thinking of the title of one of Elton John’s monster-hit songs, from which we will steal a few fragments of his lyrics: “Tiny Dancer…you must have seen her…had a busy day today.”