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The Wedding Post

So, it’s been two days now, and I’ve had a little time to reflect on the events of the weekend. It’s still a little difficult to believe that Lacie and I are really, truly married now - after such a long time planning, everything went so quickly that it was hard to grasp the significance of it all as it happened. We’ve had some nice talks about the events of the day, though, and I think it’s all starting to sink in (or fade away for both of us. For those of you who’re interested, I’ll include a full report below. For those of you who’re just here for the running… Well, that part of the weekend I’ll leave above the “More…” link.

I hit the sack pretty soon after the rehearsal dinner on Friday, and slept in ’til around 8am on Saturday morning. Lacie was up at her parents’ house Friday night, so I woke up and puttered around the house all by my lonesome for a while, watching some of the Olympics and just generally wasting time before heading out to the W&OD Trail for what I hoped would be a 7 miler - you know, just to settle my nerves a bit and finish off the running week on a good note.

The run itself started out well; I was beginning a new audiobook (for those of you who enjoy young adult literature, definitely pick up Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus books - The Amulet of Samarkand and his newest, The Golem’s Eye, the latter of which I’m now about an hour into), and the weather was warm but not too much so. I was about 3 miles from the car, though, when my stomach began to hurt. I didn’t think much of it and kept going, turning around at 3.5 miles - but within the next half mile (still 3 miles from the car), I was in some major discomfort. I walked for a mile, ran half a mile, and walked the last mile to the car before speeding home. I’m still not sure what went wrong (I’m thinking it might’ve been a holdover from the weird eating schedule of the night before), but I was not a happy camper on that particular run.

Anyways, I got home, took a shower, and almost immediately began to feel better. After the shower, I did some last minute prep for the reception, watched more Olympics, and wasted more time before getting (partially) dressed and heading over to my best man’s house. The two of us then drove up to the Inn where the wedding and reception were being held, met up with the other best man and my sole groomsman (poor guy :), and set up everything - programs on all the chairs, lights strung along the patio (it was an outdoor wedding), etc.

Around 5:30, the rest of the wedding party and both families arrived and started taking pictures; that lasted for a little over an hour, and I’ve tried (and mostly succeeded) in blocking it from my memory, so yay. I have to say - my nephews and niece were adorable; I’ll be sure to get pictures of them up when possible.

At 7, we wandered upstairs in the Inn to sign the ketubah (a sort of wedding contract); that was followed at 7:30 by the processional and the actual ceremony. The wedding itself was lovely - Lacie and I couldn’t stop smiling at each other, and the only real surprise to me was the presence of two deer leaping across in the background behind the rabbi (a few other people saw ‘em, too - I swear I’m not making them up!). The ceremony was short, and we hightailed it back up to the Inn for our moment alone, during which we talked a bit about things that were important to us and - this is very important - practiced for our first dance.

(Whew! This recapping is hard work!)

So we’re upstairs dancin’, the Inn staff brings up some appetizers, and we get the call - more pictures. Sigh. After another minute or two of delay, we wandered back outside and take a couple more pictures in front of the chuppah. After that, we entered the Inn and began the mingling. This was probably one of the more fun parts of the evening for me; I wasn’t yet completely exhausted, and though I felt rushed by the need to speak to everyone, I got to spend some good time with the people I care about. I heard some great stories, caught up with some folks I hadn’t seen in a while, and generally had a grand time.

At 9:00, the Inn staff opened up the main hall for the reception, so the guests were shuttled into that area while the wedding party moved upstairs. The DJ called names, people walked downstairs (happily, no one tripped), and all was right with the world. Lacie and I were presented, and the DJ launched into Fly Me to the Moon, which is one of my favoritest songs ever.

Now this is where I was a little nervous. See, I’m not a dancer - I never have been. I’ve loved jazz, big band, and swing music since the 90’s revival, but due to a combination of factors I never started dancing to it all. Lacie, on the other hand, was big into the whole scene for a while (when she was *cough* dating someone else *cough*). In order to not make fools of ourselves (read: me), then, we resolved to take lessons together before the wedding. Between one thing and another, however, we didn’t get to it - and in fact, we didn’t even start practicing until the Monday before.

Happily, however, we ended up doing pretty well. With the few hours of practice we got in, we became comfortable with a number of moves that turned out to be fairly impressive, and the only bad thing that happened (Lacie’s train fell when the string that kept it bustled broke in the middle of our dance) either wasn’t noticed or was considered part of the dance by everyone there (she just reached down, picked it up, and kept dancing - that’s my sweetie!). We had a great time dancing, and it ended up being my absolute favorite part of the whole night.

After our dance, everyone sat down to dinner (mmm, good food). At that point, the maid of honor and my two best men gave their toasts (all of which were wonderful). The rest of the reception passed pretty normally - Lacie and I made the rounds of the tables as we could, Lacie’s parents’ gave two lovely speeches, the father-daughter dance was very emotional, and the kids were running around being cute the whole time. The hora and chairlifting were great fun, despite the fact that I was dumped out of the chair on the first lift attempt (darn amateur lifters!).

(OK, I’m clearly running down now - I know I’m glossing over a lot, so if there’s anything you want more detail on, feel free to ask… And heck, if you’ve read this far, thanks!)

The last major event of the reception was the cake cutting, which was very nice - I love the cake topper we had, and was sad when we couldn’t find it the next day. Happily, it turned up just before we gave up looking for it. There was no face-smashing with the cake

And that’s about it for the wedding. We stayed at a great bed and breakfast in Maryland that night, had brunch at Lacie’s parents’ house the next morning, and spent Sunday afternoon napping at home. The only other excitement we had was what shall henceforth be referred to as the Susan and Cookie incident, but I think that’s a topic for another post.