Laura's Wedding: I arrived on Friday afternoon and Emily met me at the airport. We hurried back to the hotel to change, said hello to her parents, the Shayda's parents, and then were off to the church for the wedding rehearsal. Emily was reading some scripture, so I tagged along and resisted bringing my Gameboy to keep me company while Emily was busy. But instead I talked to Jason (Laura's brother-in-law) and a couple other guys whose wives/girlfriends were in the wedding party and who were sitting all alone and bored in the pews. Turns out one of them works at CSC in Fort Belvoir, so we exchanged cards so I can call him and complain when the CSC cards in our system start sucking up again. Anyway, the church was quite historic and well apointed with some nice stained glass and a brand new (very loud) organ. It was an Episcopal church, which is about as close to Catholic as you can get while still being Protestant. It's how most of Emily's family was raised, so it made sense for the wedding. See more on this in my next posts.
Anyway, after that we made our way to the river front for the rehearsal dinner. It was a pig roast and man oh man was it tasty! I was introduced to roughly a million people and smiled I politely and spoke when I was spoken to. I was sooo drained after all the socialness. But after a few hours I began to be able to recognize faces and pick out who was from which side of the family. I also finally ran into Mark Shayda. He's Emily's second cousin I believe. Mark and I ran track at Woodson together back in the day, but he's 2 years older than me, and in high school, being friends with a senior as a sophomore is a huge faux pas. But it was nice to see him and say hello. He's working for Northrop Grumman in the DC area. As I keep telling people: I had no choice, DC and defense contracting is where the engineering jobs are. But Emily and I had fun at the rehearsal dinner. We danced one slow song together and called it a night.
Saturday morning we got up to go to brunch with the wedding party and parents/grandparents of the bride and groom. It is impossible to go hungry in that family. Even if you're full they'll keep giving you food! But the house hosting us was really nice and they had an immaculate garden with a little goldfish pond/fountin in the backyard. If I spent all my free time gardening, I still could never make that happen. I can't even keep my pair of palms from turning brown. :( After brunch we went back to the hotel and changed. We watched the end of the VT/NC State game (poor hokies) and part of the Clemson/FSU game, took a walk up Main St to Jersey Mike's, and took a brief nap.
The wedding went quite smoothly. Emily's reading was well-recieved. Laura looked beautiful in her dress. Greg looked great too, but then, what guy doesn't look great in a tux with coat tails? It's impossible. You could take a bum off the street, put him in a tux and send him to a White House dinner and he'd be the bell of the ball so to speak. Not that Greg looked like a bum before. I'm just saying, tuxes make men look fabulous. The wedding party itself was huge. 7 groomsmen plus Greg's dad as the Best Man. Both a Maid and Matron of Honor (Laura's best friend and older sister (Jason's wife), respectively) plus 6 other bridesmaids. Insanity. The service was very traditional, straight out of the Episcopal prayer manual, but it was very sweet anyway. Laura was grinning from the time the doors opened when she walked down the aisle until the tiem she left the church and it brought a tear to my eye seeing how happy both she and Greg were and having spent a little time with them, knowing how perfect they are for each other.
The reception was a couple blocks away at the Poinsett Club (named after the guy for whom Poinsettas are named - I was so informed by a statue near our hotel). We had two huge rooms, tons of great food (especially the peppered chicken tenders and the crab dip and the fruit and chocolate fondue table. mmmmm!), and boxes upon boxes of Krispy Kremes as favors. The band was pretty good, although the singer had a mullet and kept saying "ice ice baby" all the time. I think he was still stuck in 1988 somehow. But after the party got going, Emily even managed to get me to dance with her for a good long while. She suckered me in with a slow song which became a bunch of disco songs and some classic 80s songs. The common misconception is that I don't like dancing. I do in fact enjoy it when there are enough other people doing it so that no one really notices how stupid I look when I try to dance. I know I suck at it (I'm white, I can't help it). I have no external rhythm, lots of it inside my head (unlike my dad), but when it comes to my motor skills, no dice. Maybe that's what attracted me so much to hardcore dancing. It's very basic breakdowns are easy to windwill and floor punch to. Anyway, it was fun, and the fact that I didn't step on Emily's toes (much) I'm sure was much appreciated. It was also really cute to see all the grandparents dancing together. And when the bouquet was thrown, Emily almost caught it. She had her hands on it but it was a little too high and Pam ended up with it. Greg did a horrible job throwing the garter though and I never even had a chance. Which was probably just as well since Mr. Taylor was eyeing me quite intently the whole time, but he was smiling good-naturedly at me, so I think as long as I didn't start punching people to catch the garter he was just amused that I was trying to catch it at all.
Sunday morning we got up to see off Emily's parents and we said goodbye to Greg and Laura. Laura was still all smiles (of course, she has been every time I've seen her, but she seemed to be smiling even bigger than usual), and their Carribbean cruise is still on despite the hurricane, so I'm glad they still get to take their honeymoon. Emily and I went back to bed for a little while and then went for a walk downtown again. There were 9 mice hidden on Main St as part of a chamber of commerce project that a student did for hsi seniro project. So we went mouse hunting. We found 7 of them. We knew one was missing due to construction and the other was MIA at a bank. But we had a nice walk all over town and down to the river and teh water fall. I'll post pictures tomorrow or the next day. Then Emily took me to the airport and we had a nice lunch before she drove back to Atlanta and I jumped on my iJet to head back to Fairfax.
Now I'm home and getting things put away and so forth. I wanted to post more tonight, but I'm too tired. But in a way, that's good. It will enable me to relive this past weekend all week long as I post more things about it. I had such a fun time, even though I didn't really know anyone. Emily obviously, and I've spend a good bit of time with a lot of the Taylor/Beard clan, and the Shaydas, but there were 250 people at the wedding, so that was a small percentage of people I knew. But I'm really glad I went and I know Emily is too. We both had fun and being able to see her every couple weeks makes this long distance thing a million times easier. Until tomorrow then (like there isn't enough here to read already...)
Anyway, after that we made our way to the river front for the rehearsal dinner. It was a pig roast and man oh man was it tasty! I was introduced to roughly a million people and smiled I politely and spoke when I was spoken to. I was sooo drained after all the socialness. But after a few hours I began to be able to recognize faces and pick out who was from which side of the family. I also finally ran into Mark Shayda. He's Emily's second cousin I believe. Mark and I ran track at Woodson together back in the day, but he's 2 years older than me, and in high school, being friends with a senior as a sophomore is a huge faux pas. But it was nice to see him and say hello. He's working for Northrop Grumman in the DC area. As I keep telling people: I had no choice, DC and defense contracting is where the engineering jobs are. But Emily and I had fun at the rehearsal dinner. We danced one slow song together and called it a night.
Saturday morning we got up to go to brunch with the wedding party and parents/grandparents of the bride and groom. It is impossible to go hungry in that family. Even if you're full they'll keep giving you food! But the house hosting us was really nice and they had an immaculate garden with a little goldfish pond/fountin in the backyard. If I spent all my free time gardening, I still could never make that happen. I can't even keep my pair of palms from turning brown. :( After brunch we went back to the hotel and changed. We watched the end of the VT/NC State game (poor hokies) and part of the Clemson/FSU game, took a walk up Main St to Jersey Mike's, and took a brief nap.
The wedding went quite smoothly. Emily's reading was well-recieved. Laura looked beautiful in her dress. Greg looked great too, but then, what guy doesn't look great in a tux with coat tails? It's impossible. You could take a bum off the street, put him in a tux and send him to a White House dinner and he'd be the bell of the ball so to speak. Not that Greg looked like a bum before. I'm just saying, tuxes make men look fabulous. The wedding party itself was huge. 7 groomsmen plus Greg's dad as the Best Man. Both a Maid and Matron of Honor (Laura's best friend and older sister (Jason's wife), respectively) plus 6 other bridesmaids. Insanity. The service was very traditional, straight out of the Episcopal prayer manual, but it was very sweet anyway. Laura was grinning from the time the doors opened when she walked down the aisle until the tiem she left the church and it brought a tear to my eye seeing how happy both she and Greg were and having spent a little time with them, knowing how perfect they are for each other.
The reception was a couple blocks away at the Poinsett Club (named after the guy for whom Poinsettas are named - I was so informed by a statue near our hotel). We had two huge rooms, tons of great food (especially the peppered chicken tenders and the crab dip and the fruit and chocolate fondue table. mmmmm!), and boxes upon boxes of Krispy Kremes as favors. The band was pretty good, although the singer had a mullet and kept saying "ice ice baby" all the time. I think he was still stuck in 1988 somehow. But after the party got going, Emily even managed to get me to dance with her for a good long while. She suckered me in with a slow song which became a bunch of disco songs and some classic 80s songs. The common misconception is that I don't like dancing. I do in fact enjoy it when there are enough other people doing it so that no one really notices how stupid I look when I try to dance. I know I suck at it (I'm white, I can't help it). I have no external rhythm, lots of it inside my head (unlike my dad), but when it comes to my motor skills, no dice. Maybe that's what attracted me so much to hardcore dancing. It's very basic breakdowns are easy to windwill and floor punch to. Anyway, it was fun, and the fact that I didn't step on Emily's toes (much) I'm sure was much appreciated. It was also really cute to see all the grandparents dancing together. And when the bouquet was thrown, Emily almost caught it. She had her hands on it but it was a little too high and Pam ended up with it. Greg did a horrible job throwing the garter though and I never even had a chance. Which was probably just as well since Mr. Taylor was eyeing me quite intently the whole time, but he was smiling good-naturedly at me, so I think as long as I didn't start punching people to catch the garter he was just amused that I was trying to catch it at all.
Sunday morning we got up to see off Emily's parents and we said goodbye to Greg and Laura. Laura was still all smiles (of course, she has been every time I've seen her, but she seemed to be smiling even bigger than usual), and their Carribbean cruise is still on despite the hurricane, so I'm glad they still get to take their honeymoon. Emily and I went back to bed for a little while and then went for a walk downtown again. There were 9 mice hidden on Main St as part of a chamber of commerce project that a student did for hsi seniro project. So we went mouse hunting. We found 7 of them. We knew one was missing due to construction and the other was MIA at a bank. But we had a nice walk all over town and down to the river and teh water fall. I'll post pictures tomorrow or the next day. Then Emily took me to the airport and we had a nice lunch before she drove back to Atlanta and I jumped on my iJet to head back to Fairfax.
Now I'm home and getting things put away and so forth. I wanted to post more tonight, but I'm too tired. But in a way, that's good. It will enable me to relive this past weekend all week long as I post more things about it. I had such a fun time, even though I didn't really know anyone. Emily obviously, and I've spend a good bit of time with a lot of the Taylor/Beard clan, and the Shaydas, but there were 250 people at the wedding, so that was a small percentage of people I knew. But I'm really glad I went and I know Emily is too. We both had fun and being able to see her every couple weeks makes this long distance thing a million times easier. Until tomorrow then (like there isn't enough here to read already...)
