Tying Up a Loose End

In my tirade about the crappy state of organized religion, I left a major end dangling and I feel the need to tie it off. Remember several posts ago when I mentioned that the hub would be performing a wedding? You know for the couple who have the world's cutest baby girl? The daddy is my friend's son who was huge at birth and went to Iraq the same time my daughter had her heart transplant. Remember? No? Well, you must be new to my blog. Or you've been in a coma. I hope you're feeling better - now get caught up!

Anyway, on August 20th, the hub, the daughter unit and I went down to Carmel and checked into our hotel. Well, first we stopped at the pub across the street for some refreshment. This would be a recurring theme over the weekend. When we got into our room, we discovered it had a kitchen with a full sized refrigerator! I thought this was standard for all the rooms, but after giving the rest of the wedding group tours of the room, I realized our was the only room with cooling capacity. The fridge rapidly filled with wine, beer, and a couple of bottles of hard liquor which I know don't need refrigeration but seemed happy to be among friends.

The hub wanted to take a walk to bank a few calories because we knew that there was eating on the horizon. And all that booze...We got into our sneakers and opened the door to find one of the other wedding guests about to knock on our door seeking access to the fridge. More people started gathering and bottles started being opened, glasses passed, cigars smoked. It got fun fast. We forgot about the walk and decided to socialize instead. These are nice people and they buy good wine. We made a good choice.

Later that night, after the wine-a-thon, we proceeded to the hotel's conference room where my buddy had arranged the mother of all rehearsal dinners (Oh, yeah, the wedding party had a rehearsal, but the rest of us stayed at the hotel "waiting for stragglers" and sucking down more wine). The dinner was a buffet, and I gotta say, the beef was so delicious it actually melted in my mouth. There was salmon and veggies and polenta, too. And wine. The dinner was fantastic, and the flowers were so pretty I wanted to eat them but there were some delphiniums and those are poisonous so I just took home a bouquet instead. Like their daughter's wedding, we laughed, toasted, cried, and ate like pigs.

The wedding day dawned foggy but not terribly cold and we had high hopes for some sunshine before the ceremony. The day was spent walking around in Carmel, which is the only thing you can do in Carmel that won't require a second mortgage.I did find a pair of earrings on sale which matched my dress so I considered that a major score. When we got back to the hotel, we discovered that there had been some family drama, lots of tears and door slamming. In other words, the usual wedding stuff.

At about 5pm we headed for a really cool little wine bar for wine and hors d'oeuvres. At 7 we all walked down to the beach, shed our shoes and crossed the sand to very near the water. We created an aisle out of seaweed and the hub got ready. As the girls arrived on a cool trolly, the guys met them and escorted them to the assembled masses. The bride's sister is 15 and possesses the voice of an angel. She also plays the guitar beautifully and serenaded us with a love song as everybody came together. I forgot to mention that as we were waiting for the couple to arrive we realized that the tide was coming in so we moved our assembly back. Twice. That water can move!

The bride was gorgeous, the ceremony lovely, and the hub did a great job. There were more tears, hugs, and crashing waves. Plus, just in time for the bride to show up - the sun came out! It was like a wedding in a romance novel! When it was time for their first married kiss the groom picked his bride up and swung her in the air! It was so romantic. Which is kind of surprising since they do have the aforementioned baby, and its not their first time at the rodeo, if you know what I mean...

We walked back to the restaurant and indulged in more delicious food, wine and conversation. when it came time for cake, there was a really pretty three tier wedding cake with flowers on it. It looked like a regular wedding cake but it was CHEESECAKE inside. There was chocolate and caramel sauce an strawberries on sticks. I want to live there and eat that food forever. Yum! More wine later, we walked back to the hotel (probably burned off a whole calorie! Maybe two...).

The next day we went out for brekkie with my buddy and her hub. Petted some dogs (Lots of Standard Poodles in Carmel), talked to some nice people, looked at some really expensive real estate, then headed home. It was a seriously fun weekend and such a beautiful and meaningful wedding.We got to hang with my bud and her hub. Plus we found out their daughter (the June bride) is pregnant!

I told my friend, though, that if her kids don't stop popping out babies and getting married, I'm going to turn into a fat alcoholic. A happy one, though...