Wedding Weekend

May 25th, 2004

Here in Canada it seems like they’re having long weekends all the time. We took advantage of that and planned the wedding for the “May long weekend,” which always falls on the first weekend preceeding May 25. We figured it would be nice to have a 3-day “anniversary weekend” each year. Plus there’s that much more time to party.

Mark, our friend from Florida and man of honour (< —see Canada, let me work already!) arrived on Thursday. When I left Seattle with nothing but cats and a suitcase and a couple of boxes of my most precious belongings (the stuff that was easiest to grab out of storage,) I was forced to leave behind my car. For some reason they don’t allow those on airplanes. Must be those heightened security measures…

Thanks to the wonderful krt and fire, who generously fetched the car from the pricey airport parking lot, let it sit at their house, and even cleaned the darn thing out, and man of honour Mark who offered to fly to Seattle from Tampa and drive the silly car all the way here – my baby car is now here, in one piece, no thanks to the bad tires she currently sports.

Friday night, in lieu of a traditional stripper-and-beer bachelor party, we invited a bunch of etc’s coworkers over and got all drunky-drunk. Knowing the Big Day was to follow, we kept our alcohol consumption at safe levels – you know, to avoid wedding day hangover. But we did have a great time, and I got to meet a bunch of new people who were very fun.

The ceremony itself was perfect. Originally we planned to have it outside in the garden, among the strawberries and hopps that we’d recently replanted and that looked pretty darn good. But the weather had other ideas – rain and slush, so we assembled in the living room.

We limited our real life guests to very close friends and his immediate family. My own family isn’t able to travel due to health/caregiving reasons so we set up a fabulous webcam and let people watch it all live. There was no sound, but they got the idea.

And then because we are irc addicts we also had Mark broadcast an irc play-by-play of the event. Incidentally that transcript is funny and precious and something that I’ll treasure forever. And how Mark kept from cracking up laughing while talking to those loons is so beyond me. It’s almost as good as the wedding photos that idiot jhb deleted. Yeah. rm and I are not really friends anymore.

Mr. Ron Kromm, (who is wonderful and if ever you’re in Calgary and need a wedding commissioner, he’s your guy) waved his magic wand upon us, and *poof* in the most incredible few moments of my life, the deal was sealed.

Then we all headed out for pasta at the spaghetti factory, which I love because the spumoni and coffee are included with the meal.

After dinner we returned to the house. etc and mark got shit-faced and did upside down margarita shots for our web cam audience, and at some insanely late/early hour those two drunken geeks walked to the gas station for chips and smokes.

Luckily we didn’t schedule anything for Sunday, so we slept in.

Monday was meet the in-laws day. We invited all his brothers and sisters and their families and had a celebratory barbeque. Needless to say I was nervous. You never want to be the wife that they all talk about. “Did you see what she did!?!” “That’s totally something jhb would do!” We ate everything in sight and drank boatloads of wine that didn’t even come from boxes! (Never a good idea, according to those queer eye guys, but interestingly, ok in the eye of this month’s Real Simple magazine.) In the end all the worrying was over nothing. etc’s family is amazing and warm, and just as weird as my own family.

It was the perfect ending to a perfect weekend, and I honestly couldn’t be happier.