A Window, A Light...

I'm trying to approach this from a number of angles, so bear with me. Like with many big events in life, during the moments they happen, they can seem overwhelming. In time, though, even the biggest events become foggy and insubstantial, like dreams after waking. Not to get too philosophical, or anything, that's just the way life is. The here and now is bright and vivid while the past is ever the providence of memory.

So, whatever.

Here's the overview; Katie and I had our ceremony at the Botanical Gardens and we had our reception at the Moonrise Hotel in the Delmar Loop in UCity. Technically, we'd been married for literally, exactly one year at that point since we'd gotten married on the 25th of May in the Belleville courthouse in 2012. I think how much that matters really depends on the person, but this is when we got to celebrate the occasion and one year seems pretty much as good a milestone as any. I think that 1 year is supposed to be the paper anniversary, but instead we threw a modest party. Ahem.

One of the things we've been saying over and over again, as a mantra to ourselves and others, to justify spending this kind of money (regardless of the source) is that there's no way we'd be having a celebration like this unless someone else wanted it enough to pay for it. Neither Katie nor I can even come close to affording it, and my parents certainly can't either. It's really only through the intervention of Katie's parents that we could manage it, but ironically, they were also our greatest stumbling block to pulling it off without too many issues. They would frequently green-light an expense after a conversation and balk when the bill came due, and that left both of us in a constant state of queasy nervousness as we slowly got too far in to pull the plug in any kind of reasonable way.

I tapped some of my best friends to join us in the wedding party, as did Katie. We briefed them, at one point, in person and over Skype (since some where coming from quite far away to join us by car and plane) as to what our plans were, but we all knew that Kay was going to have a hard time, logistically, getting a bachelor party thrown for them and, since no information was coming down the pipe about one for me, either, we just opted to set a date for us to throw a party and if another one was thrown for either or both of us at some point by our friends then, well, so be it.

This didn't sit well with others, though we didn't discover that until quite late into the game and the way things unfolded was explosively dramatic, culminating in major issues before the rehearsal and forcing us to abandon a lot of our preparation for failed negotiations on my part. Past that, rehearsals went fairly well and we proceeded to the ceremony next day where some people literally had only made it into town just in time for the actual event.

When it decided to rain on our outdoor wedding from literally, exactly the time it was scheduled until literally, exactly the time it ended. We repositioned it, but the movement through a lot of people off and things went a little late and we had to track down parents, friends, and wedding party members.

We arrived at the reception 30 minutes late to discover the guests had already eaten every scrap of food already. Katie's parents had tried to skate by without a huge catering bill, but that ended up only being about 17 dollars a head, and it lasted only until we arrived. The guests enjoyed it, but Katie's dad was pretty dismayed. Kay's parents had their own plates brought up and were eating quite well while the rest of the wedding guests were trying to determine if any more food was coming, forcing Kays father to go down and negotiate the price on sending more food up to hungry wedding guests while the wedding party was trying to determine if we should all just file out and hit up the Church's Chicken across the street. Funny story - I actually did not get to eat dinner. Someone found some bits of food in the kitchen for Kay and I, but we refused to eat in front of our guests and the wedding party, so we distributed them among our friends until new food arrived.

After that, the reception went fine. There was a lot of dancing and music until the party ran down at 11 - most of the guests had abandoned the field at that point, and we were left with a few of the wedding party and one or two other guests. Everyone says they had a really great time, so, as you know if you're in the center of a storm like that it seems much more hectic while, to others, it seems fun and somewhat effortless. Because the guests got to eat first, they didn't really notice that the food was a major issue and even though I didn't get to hit the open bar, it sounds like everyone else did, so it was a pretty good success for the majority of the people!

Some of the wedding party bought us champaign during the reception and afterwards we went to the rooftop bar to drink with our friends, our videographer and our DJ, where we had some more champaign and a little beer. After that wore down, it was terribly late, but Kay and I got into the hot tub in our room(!), ordered three Schlafly beers (Kolsh and Pale Ale) and white bean hummus with pita chips on the room tab, while some friends had been so kind as to smuggle some mackerel nigiri from a local sushi place in for us. We tiredly consumed this bounty and happily sipped beers until we decided that 3 AM was too late to be alive anymore and hit the sack.

The Moonrise is already a wonderful place to stay, but the suite we stayed in surprised us one last time when we turned out the lights and discovered that, hidden in the light, the ceiling had been decorated with luminescent paint in the shape of stars and the Milky Way band in a cloudless night sky. The next time we got to eat was the morning, which came far too soon. Katie woke up at 7 and I at 9 when we ate, bedraggled, at their excellent restaurant on the first floor with the remains of our wedding party - including one member who had been in such a state that we were able to actually make use of the drunk tank room we had booked.

There, that's the overview. Even in brief, it's long! The specific stories may be of interest as I find time to jot them down, here, though.

Work has been killing me dead physically and, as you're aware, the physical too often becomes mental. Katie and I have been having a lot of success in our day to day, which is exciting, even though the individual actions are quite mundane. Take it from me! But even though it's quite arduous, things are working pretty well, and I'm actually quite excited. We're starting the in-depth wedding ceremony and reception prep, being held at the Botanical Gardens in St. Louis and at the Moonrise Hotel in U. City at the Loop, respectively. We're not inviting a huge amount of people, but there should end up being a decent number - some, but not all, of the invitations have gone out. This kind of thing is a bit stressful. 

Katie's parents are footing the bill for a large amount of this, considering we simply cannot. Initially, we were content to keep the festivities very small and quite humble, but while this is our deal, Kay's parents are fairly well aware that they're unlikely to get another opportunity to see a wedding event for their children, are were willing to pay in order to fund a more grandiose event. I have to admit that I was initially hesitant to accept such a large gesture, but weddings can be very important to people, and it's resulting in something I'm quite pleased with. The locations were surprisingly reasonable in their pricing, not being much worse at all than smaller or more humble locations. I don't say this often, but our fortune has been quite good in this endeavor.

Some of you are likely to receive invitations. If you don't, and you expected to or really want to attend, let me know - there is a possibility we dropped the ball and missed your card or we can accommodate you. I'm hedging a guess and assuming that everyone that can reasonably expect one is going to receive one (and people who don't might still get one), but I could easily be wrong on this one. As always, I don't intend any disrespect or snub to anyone. 

As we knock out personal obligations and projects, we're trying not to take on any more, and working on prioritizing what we've got left.