As the entire congregation leaned toward us like a flying wedge, I hustled Edgar into our pew, inserting myself between him and my mom. At that exact second, the string quartet segued from “My Heart Will Go On,” a song that I’d tried to discourage my sister from using, since it’s essentially a dirge, into a percolating medley mixing “Uptown Funk” with “Rockin’ Robin” and “Crazy In Love” as a formally dressed bridesmaid and groomsman somersaulted down the center aisle and golden glitter rained down. The other paired bridesmaids and groomsmen followed, performing exuberant, fist-pumping, boogying, leapfrogging choreography and tossing more glitter in my sister’s signature colors, magenta and powder blue. I loved all this, because I think any event should reflect the spirit of the participants, and my sister Abby wanted, as she’d told me, “a cross between a flash mob, the finale of a reality show singing competition and Mardi Gras on Mars.”

I glanced at Edgar to see if he was appalled, but his shoulders were bouncing happily to “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease, for which the quartet had added an electric guitarist and a horn section. Then, as a syncopated “Wedding March” began, Abby appeared, on my father’s arm. Abby has devoted her life to the following items: her family; her career as a pediatric surgeon; her circle of friends, who’d voted on a collective shade of spray tan; her search for love, which had arrived at Dane Lefkowitz, a jock-ish, affable attorney and golfer; but above all else, her wedding gown. At the age of two, Abby had swaddled a Raggedy Ann doll in toilet paper and married it to our dachshund, in a bowtie and yarmulke.

Abby was no amateur bridezilla, slicing pages out of magazines in dental offices and curating a Pinterest board of lacy options. She’d submitted a thousand-signature petition to her Girl Scout troop to have Gown Research ranked as a merit badge. At sixteen she’d asked for a custom-crafted dress form to be installed in her bedroom to wear muslin mock-ups. As an intern she’d cheered up desperately ill children by asking them to vote on front-running options, as a welcome distraction.