Thursday, May 27, 2004
An Utter Logistical Failure and a Wedding
Mark declared our vacation, upon arrival in North Carolina, an utter logistical failure. We had forgotten to bring the tape adapter for the CD and MD players, toothbrushes, I had left behind the books I had gotten my mother for Mother's Day and her birthday, and Mark, well, he forgot his entire suit to wear to Melanie's wedding, even after taking out extraneous items left in the suit bag last time and watching me pack two different possible outfits. Whoops.
For all that, we managed to have a very good time during our vacation, and Mark got to debut an entirely new fashion statement at Melanie's wedding on Saturday. Will already has his pictures up, but Mark has deemed his not yet ready for public view, so I'll just have to use my words.
It is, I have noted, the wedding season amongst my acquaintances now. So far this year, I've been to Ellie's and Melanie's weddings, and next month Heidi is getting married. It's interesting to see the different approaches to weddings. Ellie and Matt, as good Grinnellians, had an original wedding, with a male "Maid" of Honor, a red wedding dress, and an iPod as the DJ. Melanie and PJ, however, went for a far more traditional, Baptist ceremony. Melanie's dress was very simple, but had a long enough train that her sister, acting as Matron of Honor, was kept busy arranging it every time Melanie had to move during the ceremony. The bridesmaids all had purple (yay!) dresses, the men all had peach rosebuds, and one of Melanie's (and my) friends sang the solos. The only short moment of confusion came at the end when they had to figure out which aisle, bride's or groom's, to leave from, since the church's sanctuary had no center aisle.
Then it was off to the Woman's Club for the reception, which went on for four hours. There were, unfortunately, no chairs for people not in the wedding party or who hadn't had the foresight to rush over from the church and stake their claim, but we managed to solve that by occasionally retreating to the lobby to sit on the couches out there, where Mark became the traffic director for people looking for the poorly labeled Ladies' room. He is such a helpful boy. Amusingly, people didn't really start dancing until the DJ played the Electric Slide, and suddenly everyone remembered their elementary school gym class days. I suppose it's good that we all learned something useful back then.
Towards the end of the evening, Will, Erin, Daniel, and I managed to catch Melanie for pictures with the high school crew. Steven, Neil, and Sarah couldn't make it, so our ranks were somewhat depleted, but we still managed to represent ourselves well, I think. Don't we make a good looking group?
Congratulations, Melanie!
(I promise to have the pictures up soon, for people who couldn't be there, and anyone else who might care.)
Mark declared our vacation, upon arrival in North Carolina, an utter logistical failure. We had forgotten to bring the tape adapter for the CD and MD players, toothbrushes, I had left behind the books I had gotten my mother for Mother's Day and her birthday, and Mark, well, he forgot his entire suit to wear to Melanie's wedding, even after taking out extraneous items left in the suit bag last time and watching me pack two different possible outfits. Whoops.
For all that, we managed to have a very good time during our vacation, and Mark got to debut an entirely new fashion statement at Melanie's wedding on Saturday. Will already has his pictures up, but Mark has deemed his not yet ready for public view, so I'll just have to use my words.
It is, I have noted, the wedding season amongst my acquaintances now. So far this year, I've been to Ellie's and Melanie's weddings, and next month Heidi is getting married. It's interesting to see the different approaches to weddings. Ellie and Matt, as good Grinnellians, had an original wedding, with a male "Maid" of Honor, a red wedding dress, and an iPod as the DJ. Melanie and PJ, however, went for a far more traditional, Baptist ceremony. Melanie's dress was very simple, but had a long enough train that her sister, acting as Matron of Honor, was kept busy arranging it every time Melanie had to move during the ceremony. The bridesmaids all had purple (yay!) dresses, the men all had peach rosebuds, and one of Melanie's (and my) friends sang the solos. The only short moment of confusion came at the end when they had to figure out which aisle, bride's or groom's, to leave from, since the church's sanctuary had no center aisle.
Then it was off to the Woman's Club for the reception, which went on for four hours. There were, unfortunately, no chairs for people not in the wedding party or who hadn't had the foresight to rush over from the church and stake their claim, but we managed to solve that by occasionally retreating to the lobby to sit on the couches out there, where Mark became the traffic director for people looking for the poorly labeled Ladies' room. He is such a helpful boy. Amusingly, people didn't really start dancing until the DJ played the Electric Slide, and suddenly everyone remembered their elementary school gym class days. I suppose it's good that we all learned something useful back then.
Towards the end of the evening, Will, Erin, Daniel, and I managed to catch Melanie for pictures with the high school crew. Steven, Neil, and Sarah couldn't make it, so our ranks were somewhat depleted, but we still managed to represent ourselves well, I think. Don't we make a good looking group?
Congratulations, Melanie!
(I promise to have the pictures up soon, for people who couldn't be there, and anyone else who might care.)
