The Night Weddings Give Way to the First Ordinary Evening in Weeks

For most of July the wedding started at one in the morning, because that was when the pavement finally cooled enough to stand on, and the guests danced until the first gray light chased them home. This week, for the first time since June, a couple in Seville married at a civilized eight in the evening — outdoors, in a twilight that no longer tried to kill them — and the small ordinariness of it moved the guests more than any midnight ceremony had. "We planned it for two in the morning like everyone else," the bride said. "Then the heat broke and we thought — no. We want to see each other's faces in the light." The night-shift summer, that whole inverted culture of markets and concerts and weddings bloomed between eleven and four, does not vanish overnight; the deep heat is not gone, only bent. But as the dome lifts across the warm belt, the cool hours are creeping back toward the ordinary evening, and cities are reclaiming their calendars one twilight at a time. The all-night crowds thin a little. The eight-o'clock wedding returns. "We forgot what a normal evening even was," a guest said, watching the sun go down at a human hour. "Turns out we missed it."