The Fountain at Bee Tree

There's a great little St. Louis County park down our way that has everything to make it one of our favorites: a playground, Mississippi River overlook, trails, a pond, flush toilets, & a house built in the 20's as a vacation home for a rich family. And a fountain. I know everyone reading this knows by now that the fountain is the most important thing to Teddy--you could take the playground & level it as far as he's concerned. Here's a picture of the 2 of them:

Now that spring is fully sprung, we've run into a bit of a problem. You see, everyone getting married in the whole metro area seems to want to get their picture taken in front of Teddy's fountain. Oh sorry, I meant the public fountain. So about half the time when we trek over to Bee Tree on a weekend, filled with anticipation of seeing the beautiful fountain, we come over a small rise in the land & see...a limo. Damn damn damn! Sure enough, there they are: the blushing bride, her gallant groom, & at least 3 gals crammed in strapless satin gowns that they had to diet 4 months to get into ("Of course I'm a size 10! Just order the size 10!"). It doesn't matter if it's cold, windy, or sprinkling either--they will be there. Watching the bride trying to grin hard enough to keep her teeth from chattering, I can't help but think the guys are getting the better deal in this when they get to wear about 4 layers of clothing while his future wife's shoulders are turning blue.

How does Teddy react to seeing this, you may ask? Well, his first reaction is to just walk up there & look at the fountain anyway, thereby becoming a permanent part of the happy couple's memories of this glorious day. I can imagine 50 years from now: "Who the heck is that little boy in the background of your wedding picture?" "We don't know who his is, we only know his parents threatened us with death if we told him to leave."

Of course we don't let that really happen, so the wedding is only marred by the screams echoing off the river bluffs as we drag Teddy kicking back to the car. This only happened once, we've since learned not to even think of getting out of the car when there's wedding pictures being taken. We just experience the screaming a kicking inside the car, with the windows rolled up.

So this is a plea to all who may be thinking about getting married at Bee Tree Park or just getting their pictures there--DON'T. It's not a threat. It's a very firm request. It would be just a coincidence if your pictures of the blessed day had an extra person in them.