Tag: wedding

The old year passes

Friday, Dec. 22. Finishing key stuff at work before leaving on vacation. alenxa  had the day off, but was sick. Dinner with maldis , andrea-wot , and zehntaur at Koji’s (shabu-shabu). Service was surprisingly terrible, but the company was great.

Saturday, Dec. 23. Shopping, by myself. Hit the Block, Main Place, and (briefly) the Borders at South Coast. Much weirdness.

Sunday, Dec. 24. Katie was well enough that we both went shopping. Finished up at South Coast. Which actually wasn’t bad for the first few hours. We got their around 11:00-11:30, parked less than 100 feet from a mall entrance, and the crowds were light. We ran into some former classmates at Williams Sonoma (well, Katie did — I was dealing with the cashier), then went across to the former Crystal Court to hit a couple of stores. Had lunch, hits a few more stores, came back to the main section of the mall…which had gone insane in the two hours we’d been gone. Left around 4:00 and spent the evening wrapping presents while Katie baked.

Monday, Dec. 25. Christmas. Went to my parents first for lunch, then we all drove down to visit my grandparents in Temecula. Ended up getting lots of pictures of my aunt’s dogs as they explored the back yard. Dinner was late due to an inaccurate or simply misprinted recipe that indicated a cooking time for the roast about two hours shorter than necessary, but on the plus side, leaving late meant there was practically no traffic except for the mile or two leading up to the 15/91 interchange in Corona.

Tuesday, Dec. 26. Dropped Katie off at work, then spent the day on a mix of Internet, running errands, and doing laundry. After work, went down to Laguna Hills Mall so I could pick up my tux and Katie could look for some of the last-minute checklist items for maldis  and kayshabeast ‘s wedding. Had dinner at an Italian restaurant in the area called Scarantino’s.

Wednesday, Dec. 27. Drove into LA for the wedding. I’ve done this trip in ~40 minutes in good traffic, but allowed 2 hours because traffic is rarely good. Remembered a time in high school when the Literary Club went to see a matinée of Les Miserables at the Pantages. In the middle of the week. Leaving at lunchtime. On the Wednesday after Christmas. And despite allowing 2 hours, ended up at our seats literally as the opening fanfare began. Realized this didn’t bode well. As it turned out, everything was clear and fast up until we hit the 91, at which point it dropped down to stop-n-go. Arrived at the Bonaventure at 3:00, just in time for check-in, and managed to drop stuff in our room, then get back down to the lobby.  Wandered around trying to figure out which part of the lobby we were supposed to wait in, briefly met Sean, Nicola, Chris and H’Sien, ended up waiting for the second round of the “shuttle” and made it to the rehearsal around 4.  The rehearsal, dinner, and after-dinner get-together could probably fill its own post (and besides, 2/3 of the people reading this were there).

Thursday, Dec. 28.  Breakfast downstairs in the hotel.  Katie went off for the bridesmaids/groomsmaids hair+make-up session.  I hopped on the Internet to check some work-related stuff, then walked around downtown LA sightseeing.  I’ve never just spent time in the area.  It’s always been a place to go for events.  Drive in to see a play, drive out.  Drive in to visit a museum, drive out.  Got a little nervous when I realized I was walking around a major US city taking photos of buildings, but no security guards with too much time on their hands told me to stop.  Grabbed lunch at a deli, sat down and was asked for change as I was unwrapping my sandwich.  Decided to take it back to my hotel and eat it there.  Went over to the groomsmen call, and we’re again into wedding territory.  The wedding went very well, and again, I’ll jot stuff down in its own post.  Too tired to go to the post-reception party at the hotel, though.

This way to weird LA photos…

Friday, Dec. 29.  Slept in a bit.  Packed.  Went downstairs for a light breakfast, then went back to grab luggage and check out.  Stopped on the way back to have lunch with alenxa’s parents.  Got home earlier than expected, so we stopped at home to unload the car.  Katie took a nap (she’d started coming down with a cold the night before).  Went out to return the tux, then went to Katie’s cousin’s for a semi-Christmas dinner.

Saturday, Dec. 30.  Mostly errands and stuff.  Finally put away the sea of wrapping paper and ribbons left over from Sunday and Tuesday.

Sunday, Dec. 31.  More random stuff.  Watched the Claymation Christmas Special from the 1980s, which I had tracked down on DVD earlier in the year mainly to show Katie the “We Three Kings” sequence.  (The three kings are camped in the desert, singing each verse solemnly, and then the camels jump in with an upbeat version of the chorus.  After a while, the kings start glancing warily at the camels as they near the end of a verse.  The whole show has a sort of off-beat humorous tone to it.)  Picked up work on my website after several weeks’ break.  Katie baked brownies, and we went over to my parents’ annual New Year’s Eve party.  At one point, someone dragged out a tape of Closet Cases of the Nerd Kind, a 1980 parody of Close Encounters done in the form of an extended trailer.  It still holds up, and is funny enough on its own terms, even if (like me) you don’t remember much about the original film.

Monday, Jan. 1.   Lunch & coffee with wayens.  (Though, come to think of it, I’m not sure any of us had actual coffee.)  More errands (mostly stuff I forgot to get the day before). Watched a pair of Justice League episodes. Really got back to the Flash site.  Intended to go to bed early, but ended up staying up late again.

SNAFU Resolved

Bleah. Yesterday we got a letter from the county clerk-recorder warning us that they hadn’t received our signed marriage license yet, that it had to be in within 10 days of the ceremony, and that there were only 30 days left before it would expire if unused. (We picked it up at the beginning of March.)

So there were phone calls, voice mails and emails to determine who had it at the end of the day. There was web searching to find out what to do next. It turns out that the California family code explicitly states what needs to be done if a marriage license is lost after the ceremony but before it’s recorded… but it says nothing about what happens if you miss that 10-day deadline.

And this morning, I called the county to see if they had received it since printing the letter. It turned out they had. I only got part way through spelling my name before they finished it and said “It’s right here.” I didn’t ask any more – if they had it today, it was at least postmarked within 10 days, and that qualifies.

Current Mood: 🙂relieved

It’s a mystery!

Sometime last week – after the “rehearsal” – I realized just what part of the wedding I was most anxious about:

A wedding is the Actor’s Nightmare.

I mean, think about it: You’re one of the two leads in a play that hasn’t been rehearsed (just a once-through of the blocking), it’s in front of all your friends and family, there’s only one performance so you have to get it just right … if you decide to recite your vows yourselves, like alenxa and I did, you have to worry about getting your lines right… all the elements are there.

And yet somehow, it all comes together.

Friday and Saturday were all preparation, down to the point where I was triaging things. “Well, if I wear padded socks, I don’t have to go back to the tux shop to exchange the shoes, so I have time to pick up wrapping paper for the groomsmen/bridesmaids’ gifts…” I was working my way through a checklist Saturday night, and I kept adding things to it. The worst part was the list of things I couldn’t do until morning, when the clock would start ticking. Confirming the seating chart with the location, getting the car washed (in case someone decided to tie shoes to it and it ended up in the photo album), picking up the cake. Due to car limitations I ended up playing surprise host to non_seqvitvr, who made the excellent suggestion that we go somewhere for breakfast. It took up time, but it helped steady my nerves a bit. (I’d been planning on cereal, but I was out of it enough to not notice that there was another carton of milk in the fridge.)

So while Katie and sekl went off to the salon, I worked my way through my checklist, occasionally tearing Jim away from the computer long enough to get in the car. There was a bit of a scare when I thought I’d left my allergy medication at Denny’s (hey, it was nearby), but it turned up, easily accessible, in the back of the car.

It’s funny how much the wedding itself blurs together. The opening-night jitters that just wouldn’t go away until Katie and I were both “on stage” (at which point I managed to stop just a little bit too far ahead, causing me to spend most of the minister’s speech wishing I could just move my feet back a few inches), the blanking on the vows we each thought we had memorized, the “where do we go now?” that pervaded the rest of the afternoon.

Even not knowing what we were doing next during the reception was a bit of a relief, once the ceremony was done. Somehow I made it to the end without realizing we hadn’t done a receiving line, though I suppose the table-hopping meet-and-greet fulfilled the same purpose. It was nice catching up with some friends, although others we barely had a chance to speak with. (Sorry, katyakoshka!)

There were snafus along the way, of course. You can read about some of them in sekl’s journal and in alenxa’s (which I’m not reading until I finish typing, but I know it’s there since she’s in the same room). We were planning to use Katie’s iPod instead of a DJ, but they couldn’t hook it up to the sound system. We had burned mix CDs just in case, but they got played out of order, and the first dance ended up being the full cut of “All I Want is You” instead of something a bit shorter (although that was probably our fault for not cutting the track down first). There were interesting events with cameras and credit cards, and we discovered when we came home tonight that the bakery had given us the wrong cake. But from what I can tell, everything seemed to go well on the face of it.

And really, there are only two things about a wedding that matter: The vows (and the actual meat of the ceremony surrounding them), and the show. The vows are for the couple. The show is for the community. All the backstage stuff can go completely wrong, but as long as the core of the ceremony happens, and as long as everything the guests see looks right – the cake cutting, the dance, and so on – it’s a success.

We were among the last to leave – no driving off in a haze of confetti and old shoes – and spent the night in a very nice hotel in Laguna Beach (the Surf and Sand, which I highly recommend to anyone who can get over the sticker shock) looking out at nothing but ocean and eating probably the most expensive dinner either of us has ever had (but worth it – the food was excellent). Today we checked out Disney’s California Adventure for the first time – a relaxed afternoon, since it’s both off-season and a weekday. Tomorrow we go back to work, and start figuring out where (and when) we’ll go on our real honeymoon.

(Good grief, why the heck am I still awake at this hour?)

Current Mood: 😴sleepy

Whew!

Finally got the text of the ceremony from the minister! I’d been worrying that it might have gotten tossed in a spam filter or something.

As it turns out, it came close. SpamCop has listed at least one of Adelphia’s outgoing servers (fortunately I don’t block on that), and the message was sent using software that triggered the “suspicious characters” test in MIMEDefang. (I disabled blocking on that way back when I first set up MIMEDefang, because there are too many programs out there that don’t format things quite right.)

On top of all that, the message was attached with UUencode, which I haven’t seen in ages. I was able to extract the file, but it seems no one has bothered to build uudecode functionality into KMail on the grounds that “This type of encoding is deprecated since MIME was invented… [in] June 1992.”

More proof that old software never really dies….

Current Mood: 🙂relieved

Break

OK, so I’ll be out the next several days for the wedding, so I’m trying to finish up as many projects as possible.

So naturally, this is the first moment of peace I’ve had since getting in this morning.

It’s either people wanting to talk to me, or tech support calls on issues that are outside of our control, but good luck convincing the user of that. (One customer couldn’t connect to the website we host for them, but they could connect to sites on our other servers… that are plugged into the same switch.)

Now maybe I can actually get something done…

Current Mood: 😡aggravated
Current Music: No such thing as the real world