The Night Weddings of Seville, Where Love Keeps the Cool Hours Too

SEVILLE — The bride arrived at half past eleven, because that is when it is finally cool enough to wear lace. In the inverted summer of the warm belt, the wedding has followed the concert and the market into the hours after dark, and Seville has made an art of the midnight vow. The ceremony this Saturday began near midnight in a courtyard strung with misting arches, the guests fanning themselves against the day's stored heat, the dancing carrying on until the first gray light sent everyone, finally, to bed. It is not merely practical, though it is that; the whole grammar of a life here has shifted after sundown. Children are born in night clinics, business is done at two in the morning, grandparents who have not seen daylight socially in months keep to the same nocturnal calendar as the young. "My mother was married at noon in a hat," the bride said, laughing, mascara holding against the mist. "I was married at midnight in the cool. We are the same family. We just live at a different hour now." The photographer worked by lamplight and starlight. The cake was cut at three. And as the sky paled, a city that has learned to love in the dark folded up its chairs and went, contentedly, to sleep through the sun.