wedding bells

feelin' rough: i knew i shouldn't do it, but i stayed up way too late the night before. not having a bachelorette party, i couldn't resist kicking it with the girls for awhile, and actually the going to bed late part wouldn't have been the end of the world if i would have actually gotten some sleep at all. but i couldn't. i was too nervous and the lack of sleep combo just made me feel worse. so by morning i was a groggy nauseated mess. not fun.

i got my wedding gear on without incident, and let jb and shawna and cristin stick flowers in my hair and work on getting the veil on. jb got to work on my hair, and that got everyone motivated. next thing i know jb's hair salon was open for business and everyone was in line. i had fun watching her go at it, while i was nursing my ginger ale. i've never seen her do that before but it was pretty cool.

the major concern of the day was, "Where's the wedding cake?". Apparently it was back in Millington, and my dad was sent after it. Although I was freaked out by the delay (one thing i had really wanted was for the wedding to be over with before it got hot out) but in retrospect, i realize he was the only person who would have known where to go. So the wedding got started an hour late, which will probably generate a fair number of jokes, but other than that, it went off without a hitch. my dad said the sweetest thing while we were walking down the aisle and morgen was just cute.

I can't remember a whole lot about the ceremony because frankly i was so focused on being nervous and trying not to cry all at the same time. but i made it up to the altar without doing anything crazy. richard seemed nervous, and brian just looked totally amazing to me. i think i was probably pretty oblivious to a lot of what was going on around me because i was looking into brian's eyes the whole time. people afterwards said they thought it was a really nice ceremony though, so all i've got to say is, let's hear it for the library book! watching the video later i got a better idea of what it was like...

although i couldn't do it much justice at the time, we had a huge buffet reception after the wedding, and as far as i can tell they did a good job of getting it set up quick. i hadn't quite recovered at that point but nobody else seemed to have any trouble finding the food. i wasn't involved in the preparations, but as far as i could tell, it seemed like things went smoothly and people sat wherever, and doing things completely without the usual "reception formalities" worked just fine for us. i've been to tons of weddings where you have formal receptions, and would have to say that this worked a lot better for my liking. nobody complained about having to wait forever to eat, and i'm sure people were a whole lot happier just doing their own thing.
i was pretty happy that i didn't have to sit at a wedding party table and be the center of attention all night, put up with speeches, or have people sticking cameras in my face wanting me to kiss brian...not that i have any problems with kissing brian...just not on film with guacamole stuck to my nose, please.

boy everybody was all about some of tj's hummus. i'm glad she made it and brought it down there because i think people will probably be talking about it for years, based on the number of times i heard someone talking about it at the reception. yep, i knew all along that it was good stuff, but nothing like having about a hundred people tell you that! even my middle eastern relatives were impressed if that says anything. casey's tabouli was enormously popular too. at any rate, aside from these two declerye classics, we had lots of food at the reception, and i don't think anyone was in any danger of going hungry.

afterwards i had a good talk with kiah down by the boat ramp, and later on we went down to watch the fireworks the park decided to rustle up and set off. there were also shooting stars above us, and the less subtle dance of fireflies in the dark. it was a beautiful night.