Wedding Aftermath (Part 1)
September 04, 2006

Finally! All that wedding goodness is finished and Emily and I are officially married!

The Ceremony

We took pictures early in the morning, and everything went well with that. The small children who were there were painful at moments, but that was worked through. The photographers took an insane amount of outside shots, so much so that at what I perceive to be halfway through I simply said "enough with the outside shots". White poofy dress + poorly maintained church grounds == disaster.

After the pictures were all situated people started filtering into the church to witness the ceremony. The guys and I (Andy, Mike and James) hunted through the bowels of the basement D&D style looking for Emily. Mike never did total up the XP gained. ;( It took a little bit of work to figure out where everyone was supposed to be and that, but it all worked out. I had a good ten minutes alone with the priest, which was creepy - but I got through it.

The ceremony itself went very well. James (the Best Man) had to move a small child from his path after he gave us our rings, and I had tuned out the priest so perfectly that Emily had to poke me to continue our vows. He had us say part of our vows, and then he went into a prayer thing before returning to having us recite our vows. My tuning out ability is world-renowned.

After the ceremony Emily's parents rented us a limo to go to the reception in. We had to stop off at Emily's grandfather's house, as he had recently fallen and was unable to move very much. Poor guy even dressed up in a tie and button shirt. It's pretty impressive, because in the four years or so of being with Emily I have never once seen the man even close to dressy. So that was touching, but sad at the same time - because he's in such bad health.

The Reception

We went from her grandfather's house to the reception hall in Foley where everyone else was waiting. The girls got to go out for a limo ride, but alas the limo time was up by the time the manly men had assembled themselves to go on their own ride. We had a nice casual time talking amongst ourselves before dinner got started, which was really nice. It had been a long time since James, Andy, Mike and I had been together to just talk. Of course, David being there made it extra fun. What with him being a crazy German and all.

Dinner was nice, a little dis-organized but nice. The gravy came far after the potatoes and such were served, which left me with cold carbohydrates. No complaints though, it was all very tasty. After dinner came the fun speeches by Alicia and James. James' speech was good, and I was dis-heartened that he didn't break into the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or mention babbles. Alicia actually cried during hers which was very touching.

After I'd had enough champagne we moved on to the dancing portion of the reception. I detest dancing. I hate dancing. for ( int i=1; i>0;i++) jordan->dancing_love--; Anyway. Emily and I had our slow dance together to Copeland - Coffee; since we spent most of our dates in the local coffee shop which has since been turned into a pizza joint / coffee shop. We had the dollar dance shortly thereafter, and I got to dance with many of Emily's aunts. Sadly Paul turned me down when I offered him a free dance. :(

The DJ was terrible, but I can forget that - since I hate dancing anyway. He played "Who Let the Dogs Out" twice almost in a row. Scary. It seemed as though he had taken our list of songs that we wanted and didn't want and swapped them. If we wanted it played, it wasn't. If we didn't want it played, it was. Eh.

Then there was gift opening the next day. I won't enumerate anything here, but wow; Emily having a huge family is nice when it comes time for them to have to buy you gifts. :) From James' family we got a beautiful stained glass piece, made by his mother, that's hanging out in our living room right now. It warrants a picture later.

I'll have to make another post about Mexico later, because this one is rambling on.

Either way, it's definitely good to be back! I missed my Babblecats, and certainly missed being able to cook my own food!