Our Wedding, Our Way!

I'm taking a brief study-break, so I'll share a little from last weekend!

As forecasted, it rained Saturday, one solid thunderstorm to cleanse the earth and bless the day. Then it cleared up and was nice. It wasn’t oppressively hot or humid at the base ball park, although it was hot enough to pop a balloon in a car with no air conditioning!

Friends and relatives started coming in Friday evening. David and the girls and I met his brother, Ben and family for dinner. Tori was excited about that. I had told them about how wonderful David’s family was when I first met them, how I felt so welcomed. We weren’t sure what the plan would be, if we’d meet with them Friday or see them Saturday. Tori was insistent that we should all have dinner. We went to a local brewery restaurant. The kids seemed to get along pretty well. Ben and I both tried the beer sampler. I ended up liking and drinking two of the small glasses and really that was enough for someone who doesn’t drink often. Rina and Tori thought it was important to get a photo of me with all that beer to send to their Dad.

After dinner, the four of us went home to wait for Doug, who was staying with us. Doug got in and then the cats had enough of all of the people in their house. Baggle actually came back later and made friends with Doug, but surprisingly, Kaline stayed hidden. She pretty much decided that she didn’t need to deal with the house full of people for the rest of the weekend. On Saturday, when David’s brother Peter came in she stayed gone and when his brother Anthony came over with wife Carol and their grandson, well, you wouldn’t know we had cats!

We all managed to get into 2 vehicles, balloons and all, to head to the ballpark. When we got there, Rina and Ben stood near the main entrance with the sign for reception information, giving a niece from one side of our family and a nephew from the other on the home plate corner. Their job was to direct people to Tori and EP at the third base gate. The girls at third were in charge of checking people in and distributing the guest envelopes to our guests. After working on the favors with Rina and me, Tori assembled the name badges and prepared the envelopes with the tickets, wristbands and name badges and check in sheets. The system worked well. Tori was very into the whole wedding planner stuff. She’d done a lot of leg work with Laura’s wedding, welcoming her new Mom to the family and she did a lot to help her “old aunt” too. ;)

The bride and groom with Mudonna

I really didn’t think I was going to actually see a lot of baseball that night. I was however, gloriously surrounded by baseball. What a fitting reception party! I got to spend some time with friends and relatives, some of whom I’d just met, and still, there wasn’t nearly enough time for that. We got a visit from Muddy in the first inning and David and I got a picture with him. I was hoping we might be able to get them both together, but that couldn’t be managed during the game. Anthony brought grandson, JC, to meet Muddy. To say he wasn’t impressed is putting it so lightly. He cried. Big yellow birds in baseball jerseys are pretty frightening when you’re under 2. When Mudonna came a little bit later, David and I got our picture with her, but JC didn’t bother!

Dinner was fantastic! The carved ham and roast beef was a far cry from standard ball park fare and I’m told the mac and cheese was awesome! After we finished eating, there was an opportunity when all of the guests were present and not other places in the park for David and I to do some visiting and bring the favors to everyone. M&Ms won’t do a single letter on their personalized M&Ms. So, I made round stickers with a single letter “d” on them that look like “d” M&Ms at first glance. The stickers have our names and the wedding date on the circumference. Those stickers were on the bags that had M&Ms with our names on half and “d&d 12-23-08” on the others. They turned out to be very nice favors. We also had a newsletter with stories about how we met, our biographies and a word search with “us words” in it the newsletter got many compliments.

Our M&Ms favors

Before the cake was brought out, we invited everyone to blow the party bubbles as we released a group of balloons in memory of the family members who are no longer with us and in tribute to David’s Mom who couldn’t make the trip. The bubbles were a suggestion that Mary made and I passed it on to everyone as an “if you’d like to participate” idea. David and I held the balloons together and released them. As the balloons floated up in the sky a cloud of bubbles floated past us and followed like little angels pushing the balloons to heaven. I really don’t know what it looked like, but it felt warm, fuzzy and awesome!

Coming soon - THE CAKE!