[so this is like a saturday before last weekend recap]
incredibly, neither amanda nor i worked this weekend (17th and 18th). it has been a while since that has happened.
we spent saturday at dave and tahirih’s wedding in syracuse. it was in syracuse rather than nyc where they live because most of tahirih’s relatives live in the area. dave’s family is from waverly which is a ways south from ithaca, so syracuse was also perhaps a more convenient place for them.
the day before (friday) we went wedding clothing shopping after having dinner with erika. i quickly picked up a new white shirt as my current ones were too tight in the neck; amanda insists that my lifting activities are to blame… better due to that than, say, eating too many french fries. i also acquired a new paisley tie that amanda was not too thrilled about, but she later allowed that it is better than my old one.
amanda spent a while agonizing over what shoes to wear with her white floral print dress and eventually bought a black pair (“sure, you can wear black shoes with a white dress,” said the salesperson. “i’d do it. besides, no one should be looking at your feet anyway.”). later, tho, she would borrow a white pair from karen. she also looked for a sweater or wrap to wear if it got cold, but after trying many things on, she was denied. the sales person helped her really reminded me of someone i probably should remember, but alas, my memory is not what it used to be.
we stopped by target for some of those dryer things you can use to fake dryclean clothes as i needed to pseudoclean my suit. amanda found a red wrap thing that she ended up wearing to the wedding.
[it is now 26 july, and i am sitting in an endodontist waiting room with amanda. she is about to finally get her root canal completed. she is amuzing herself right now reading a people magazine. i was going to try to do some coding work, but doing so really burns the batteries down very very quickly in my notebook. anyways, back to the recap]
saturday morning basically consisted of us getting ourselves together for the wedding. for me that consisted of taking a shower and ironing my clothes. amanda did the same, but she spent more time deciding what to wear. we also packed a change of clothes because we intended to drive back to ithaca after the wedding and reception instead of returning the buffalo.
as befitting our crazy schedule recently, we printed a wedding card for them right before we left. we are getting them a wine subscription; they will get two bottles of random wine (hopefully good) every month for a year.
the wedding was at 2:00 or so in syracuse, so he hit the road around 1030 to get there which much time to spare. the drive was uneventful. amanda said the stretch of i90 between buffalo and geneva was the most comforting stretch of highway she knew. we stopped at the scottsville rest area (a previous favorite of mine to get hash browns in the morning) for a bit of lunch. i managed to dribble stuff on my shirt, but i had not dressed in my fancy clothes yet to avoid such a happening. we stopped at a later rest area to change into our wedding clothes. i actually just changed in the parking lot to avoid the typical nasty rest area bathrooms which would be in full use at the time.
[amanda just got summoned to the mysterious area beyond a big white door here in the waiting room. who knows what goes on back there?]
finding the church (“most holy rosary church”) where the wedding was at proved to be more challenging than expected. we were using a map that dave provided to everyone which amuzingly stated “not at all to scale.” unfortunately for us, an exit we were looking for did not exist in the direction we were going, so we wandered about a bit until we got back on track. we eventually found the church, we we were puzzled that no one seemed to be there, there did not seem to be a lot of activity going on, and the church building itself did not really seem like wedding material. we were a bit early, so we drove to a pharmacy to get some refreshments. amanda also picked up some random jewelry to wear as well. we headed back to the church, but there still seemed to be no one around. at this point, we drove around to block to see if we were actually in the right place, and lo, the ceremony was taking place in another part of the church complex.
[there are certainly a lot of people needing root canals. i would never have thought.]
amanda took some time to apply some makeup in the car whilst i wandered about. we then headed to the church to await the ceremony. the wedding party arrived in due course, and we talked to jesse and dave briefly, but dave was obviously busy and jesse was best man, so they ran off for final preparations.
[ok, now it is 27 july, and i am at work in ithaca. maybe someday i will get around to posting this entry. amanda’s root canal appointment was very quick as the endodontist just did more cleaning and will plug it in a couple of weeks. at which point our dentist will then finish it off. my gosh, there are many people involved in this procedure.]
the ceremony itself was very nice. i was a bit surprised that they were going to have a formal catholic-type wedding, and i was prepared for a long ceremony plus mass, but they had a nice ceremony sans mass (“do i have to kneel?” said amanda. “we don’t do the church thing very much… like never” said julie). one of the wedding party, the maid of honor perhaps, sang a song and accomplanied herself which was cool. i had also envisioned hundreds and hundreds of people present after seeing the church, but i think 120-140 people were actually there (still much much larger than my wedding).
dave and tahirih seemed to have a great time which perhaps is to be expected. they had a receiving line after the wedding (i remember reading that one of their original purposes was to make sure no undesirables snuck into the wedding), which was unfortunately the only time that evening i had to talk with tahirih. i did get a chance to talk with dave every now and then.
the reception was at “the wellington house” which was 20 or so minutes drive from the church. amanda and i were surprised that they only had valet parking so we had to hurriedly get ourselves together and clean up the car a bit before the valets descended. i was told the house was decorated like the game clue with all the rooms and weapons around. later in the evening we wandered about, but the clue-ness of the building was not apparent to us.
the reception itself was in the backyard… tho perhaps backyard is not really a good word as it implies an eighth of an acre in suburbia. they had many many tables set up underneath tents for the guests, another tented area for food, a couple of bar areas, and a dance floor with a live dance band. there was also plenty of other space on the lawn to hang out and socialize during the cocktail party and afterwards.
the reception itself was fun and lasted quite a long time… six+ hours i would say. there was lots of food and drink and dancing. i kinda hate dancing but went out with amanda a few times because she luvs it. dave and tahirih had many set dances that were performed before the buffet dinner. actually, the dances and speeches and whatnot were all before dinner, which was a first for me out of all the weddings that i have attended. jesse gave another good speech in his capacity as best man. the band was very good; the singer however was kinda scary as he glared balefully at the guests which was kinda incongruous considering the oldie soings he was singing. or maybe it was my imagination. dave danced with many people (which should have been jesse the best man’s job) including amanda as my swing dancing is pretty poor. dave said that amanda “needed improvement” tho.
otherwise, the evening was spent in cheerful conversation and whatnot. julie irwin and her husband, both veterinarians, were both there. i had not seen julie since she came the von cramm’s banquet in 2000. piglet would have been happy to know that they don’t consider cats to be really overweight until 16 lbs or so. they just had a daughter, olivia, whom we only got to see in pictures, ten weeks ago. she had to stay at the hotel in town with the grandmother. julie looks exactly like she did when we were at cornell. azmatonishing. i certainly look much older.
[ok, i gotta wrap this up, otherwise i will never get this entry posted. but, i have written down enuf that i will remember the events, even the ones not present in the written word. which of course is my primary motivation for this weblog. if any regular readers have gotten this far down, i apologize for my lack of detail, because, ya know, a lot of stuff was happening.]
anyways, after the cake cutting at around 930pm or so, which amanda, jesse, and anne observed from the upper deck of the house (jesse was smoking!), amanda and i made are farewells and departed. instead of going to ithaca, we decided to just return to buffalo as it would save a lot of time (which amanda and i do not have a lot of), and i felt i was awake enough to make it back.
as it turned out, we make it back in record time due to my rather flagrant flaunting of the traffic code. piglet was happy to see us. dunno about the fishes.