Chris and Sarah’s blog

On April 20th, 2008, Sarah and I got married. It’s so weird to think that we’ve already been married for 2 weeks. Since this writing is taking place way after the fact, I’ll stick to general thoughts and impressions. Events won’t necessarily be in chronological order.

The wedding day:
The entire day went wonderfully and all according to plan. Nobody forgot anything critical, failed to show up at the right time/place, or otherwise screwed up. For this, I am eternally grateful to everyone who had a role in this thing. Call me paranoid (I am), but so many people were responsible for so many things happening that I was convinced that statistically something had to go wrong, and (as far as I know) nothing did. I’d call that a miracle. If something did go wrong that you know about but I don’t, don’t tell me — I’m happier this way.

The ceremony was beautiful. At least, the parts of it that I can remember were. I went through the whole thing in a kind of a nervous but warm-fuzzy daze. For me, the hardest part of that day was the waiting in the Church choir room before the ceremony began. Fortunately, I had Jeff (my brother) there to help calm me down, and once Reverend Beringer came in, he sat us down and told stories to ease the tension. Once we came out into the sanctuary, I calmed down more, and when I saw Sarah come down the aisle the warm-fuzzy feeling took over completely. Part of that is the fact that she was (and is) breathtakingly beautiful, but also I was just so happy to see her smiling face. That meant that 1) nothing had gone seriously wrong in the morning’s intricate dance of getting her and her bridesmaids hair and makeup done (for a number of reasons that I won’t go into, this was a major concern) and 2) we were really going to do this. From then on it was smooth sailing.

After the ceremony, apparently there were pictures, though my memory of this is cloudy. Mostly I remember a sense of euphoria mixed with relief. I do remember that once we got over to the Olde Mill Inn (for yet more picture taking), one of the waiters there brought Sarah and me some hors d’ouvres (I believe that’s pronounced horse doovers) while we were being photographed outside. We were deeply grateful (since otherwise we may have completely missed out on much of the food we had painstakingly chosen and paid for), and impressed that they thought to do this. I found all my dealings with the Olde Mill Inn/Grain House restaurant to be very professional and painless. I guess they must do this sort of thing a lot, because they’ve gotten pretty good at it.

The reception itself was a lot of fun. Sarah and I both loosened up with a few drinks during the cocktail hour. Then Sarah took a seat to rest her injured ankle, while I alternated between getting drinks for the two of us, standing by her side, and wandering the room chatting up the guests. I had nice conversations with lots of people, of which I can now remember regrettably little. I do remember having an interesting talk with Sarah’s Uncle Mort about supercolliders (which I embarrassingly couldn’t think of the word for at the time). Apparently the man’s son works at Fermilab up by Chicago. Sarah and I will need to visit there sometime — I would like to see a supercollider, heh.

The reception-proper also went very well. Sarah and I had a great time, and all the guests that I’ve spoken to about it since said that they did too. Sarah and I made our ceremonial entrance to the game-ending fanfare from Super Mario Bros 2 as performed by the Minibosses (http://www.minibosses.com/brassmp3s/04supermariobros2.mp3, starting at about 4:01, stopping at 4:49), which worked quite nicely. First dances were nice, though none of the pairs knew how to dance, so we pretended by swaying back and forth. Sarah and I restrained ourselves from smearing cake on each others’ faces during the cake cutting (which was also done to an excerpt from the same song, the guitar-duet starting at 4:50 and going to the end). There was a surprising amount of dancing that took place — Sarah’s step-mother Mary’s family held down the dance floor for most of the night, and even me, Sarah, and our various friends who normally don’t dance got out there and made fools of ourselves for a little bit. Bob Kita (our DJ, of Deja Vu Disc Jockeys) did an excellent job, as did our photographer (though we won’t see the pictures for a couple more weeks, so I’m just reasonably sure he did an excellent job). The dinner was good and the cake was both beautiful and tasty. People played silly games with the favors that Sarah picked out — little “Love” notebooks (a play on DeathNote). Mostly everyone at a table would get together and write silly slanderous notes about another table, then try to frame up another table by signing it with that table’s number. Then they’d ruin the frame-up job by conspicuously throwing the paper at the targeted table. Others used the notes for something closer to their intended purpose by writing suggestive or downright dirty notes, which Sarah and I received the majority of (we think).

By the end of the night, Sarah and I were totally wiped. When the reception finally wound down, we carried everything (flowers, a few presents — the hotel staff had carried most of the presents up to our room for us but they missed one or two) back out to my parents’ car, then went up to our hotel room and crashed. It had been a wonderful wedding day, but it had left Sarah and I almost too tired to enjoy our wedding night. Almost.