The Wedding Blog

For those who are interested, Chris has posted some photos from the wedding on his website.

While you wait for the 'official' pictures (still a few weeks away), you can check them out!

Thanks, Chris!

Wow... So Melissa and I are married. It's still kinda sinking in (it took about a week for it to really dawn on me that I had graduated college; this should take about that long ;-)).

I want to thank everybody who came (some drove and/or flew long distances to be with us on Saturday), and everybody who sent cards and gifts and well wishes and so on. I'd especially like to thank those that Melissa and I recruited to be in the party, help with the planning, control the music, and so on. All of you helped make the day wonderful.

I'd also like to thank our photographer and the caterers for doing an excellent job. I'm looking forward to eating the leftovers today and tomorrow, and getting the pictures back in a couple of weeks (look for those on the pictures page sometime in late June or July).

So if you'll bear with my long-windedness, I'm going to describe the last few days and talk about the next few.

Friday evening, those of us in the wedding party and Melissa's and my parents all gathered at the church for the rehearsal. We didn't go through the entire ceremony, but we gave Pastor Rob our license and ran through the walking-in and walking-out and such. Then we all went to Lucia's Italian restaurant in Fox Mill (great Steak & Cheese subs!) for the rehearsal dinner, where Melissa and I gave gifts to the attendants and parents and siblings.

I gave Wes and Chris each pocket-watches to wear with the tuxes (while I wore a beautiful pocket-watch that that Melissa's parents gave me a while back).

On Saturday, I got to the church about noonish and was quickly sequestered out-of-sight to nervously pace and sweat and so on. Before long, the ceremony began. Melissa, of course, chose a gorgeous dress :-).

And the dress mystery is solved! Melissa has said for a while that she knew I'd like the dress because I'd seen it before and liked it. I had no idea what she was talking about. Apparently one time when we were looking through a wedding catalog, I had independently picked a blue/purple/something variation of the dress as one that I liked. Since it was blue, I was thinking for the bridesmaid dresses (I didn't know it came in white, lol).

Britt did a great job as flower girl, too. She forgot to throw the flower petals until she was already up front, and then spent part of the service picking them back up! It was adorable.

Michael (Melissa's brother) did a wonderful job on the piano for the service, and Melissa's father and Kristen (my sister) both performed beautiful special music.

After the service, we took about a billion formal pictures with every conceivable combination of family and attendants, then we were off to the tea ceremony. The tea ceremony is a Chinese tradition that Melissa could explain better than I (and there should be pictures on the site later), but it was a chance to honor our parents and grandparents by kneeling in front of them and serving them tea.

The parents and grandparents then gave us gifts -- for brevity's sake, I won't list everything, but Melissa's father gave me the guitar on which he performed his special music.

Then we went into the reception, shook hands, ate a little, had our first dance, smeared some cake on each other's faces, and whatever else (it's all something of a blur). Melissa threw the bouquet over everybody's heads (and Clarita ran to it and picked it up first) and then I threw the garter short (and Chris was the first to pick it up).

Then we got pelted with [bird-friendly] rice on the way out the door as a married couple. Many thanks to everybody who stayed after and helped clean up!

Oh, and we just happened to show up at the hotel as people were gathering for another wedding there! We got the "They aren't the bride and groom, why are they dressed like that?" kinds of looks. That was somewhat awkward, but no worries ;-).

Yesterday, Melissa and I actually made it to church (late service though) and then my parents and Wes and Scott S. (family friend after whom I'm named) all went out to lunch at Red Robin. From there, Wes and Melissa and I all went back to our apartment and then to Dulles Airport to register Melissa's camera equipment, my laptop, and our iPods with Customs so we don't get charged duties on any of it coming back. Then we went to Tyson's Corner to oogle in the Apple Store and so I could buy some luggage for the trip.

I'm working today and tomorrow, and most of the rest of our time will be packing and preparing for the honeymoon (which begins on Wednesday). We still have to get some Canadian money and make sure we've copied our birth certificates (since the originals have to come with us) and a lot of little things like that, not to mention things like paying bills that will be due while we're gone. I've already instructed the Post Office to hold our mail from Wednesday until we get back on the 13th (though I'm not sure what to do about FedEx and UPS packages, if anybody is sending those).

Then we're off to Vancouver and Alaska! There is internet access on the cruise, so I'll probably leave a blog entry here occasionally (although I think we'll be well-disconnected in the cities on either end on the cruise). Keep an eye out!

And thanks again to everybody who came, helped, or send their congrats over the last few days. You're all great!

First off, I want to thank everyone who came to share our special day.

Special thanks goes to...

My parents for raising me, putting up with me ;), and helping make this wedding possible.

Scott's parents for ... lol ...raising Scott, putting up with him (which I'm sure was all sorts of fun!), and helping make this wedding possible.

Grandma - thank you for helping with the cake and the reception. You helped tremendously!

Scott's family for welcoming me into their family.

My family for being open and welcoming towards Scott.

Michael - for planning all of the piano music. I picked up the last piano at the Swarovski store yesterday when we were at Tyson's getting luggage for Scott.

Kristen - thank you for being part of the ceremony - you play the flute wonderfully! lol, I could barely figure out the recorder :-p when I was younger.

Meredith and Christina - You guys kept me sane and it's been a ton of fun! Thank you for everything. We should sooo find the other Cirque du Soleil shows!

Chris and Wes - I'm sure Scott thanked you guys profusely, but I wanted to say thank you too. Thank you for keeping Scott together and getting him to the ceremony!

Jen, JJ, Britt - Britt, you were a beautiful flower girl and you did such a good job! Thank you. Thank you to Jen for helping me on the wedding day - from the caterering (preventing me from tearing into them) to making sure we got all of our photos to the tea ceremony. Thank you sooo much! JJ thank you too:)

Clarita! Thank you for DJ-ing and just being your beautiful spirited self. Watching you calmed me down and helped me de-stress and enjoy the day a little more.

Pastor Rob - Thank you for being the officiant. especially since it was also your anniversary.

Gosh I'm hoping I didn't forget anyone...I'm still a little exhausted from the days leading up to it and the wedding.

A big thanks to everyone who stayed to clean - I'm not quite sure who you all were (because we obviously left earlier), but THANK YOU.

To Scott - I love you with all of my heart, and I'm so glad we're married :) (especially since you can handle my stubborn/strong headed streak, crazy art ideas, OCD cleaning habits, etc). Here's to a beautiful life together! I can't wait for the honeymoon!

I'm sure Scott will update this blog on the honeymoon, and hopefully I'll have photos to upload.

Thank you again!

So I'm getting married in a couple days now. I'm working a half-day tomorrow, and then the festivities begin. The groomsmen and I are going to meet up tomorrow and try on the tuxes and probably some other stuff, then it's rehearsal day, then it's wedding day.

The reception music and the DJ are set, so my work is mostly (though, obviously, not completely) done.

I got a call from our AAA Travel Agent the other day, and Holland America has upgraded our room to an outside room at the same price -- so now we have a window! Woohoo!

We picked up our honeymoon stuff today from AAA, including our plane tickets and the cruise packet and so on. With all of that, we've discovered there's a couple of other things we have to do.

We need to get 'certified copies' of our birth certificates (required to get into Canada without a passport), and we need to register our expensive stuff with customs (like our laptops and Melissa's camera equipment) so we don't have to pay [presumably expensive] duties on them when we return to the United States.

Nothing too major, but more stuff on a long to-do list.

Things are definitely getting hectic at this point, but we're tying up the loose ends. The rehearsal dinner is coming together, we're finalizing catering and photographer plans, and so on, and so on, and so on. We're going crazy, but it's getting done!