jazzfish | so, that was a (Paper-ful) weekend

As previously mentioned,

diadelphous came out from Texas for the weekend. On Friday they braved the flurrying snow and went into the District to wander through the Smithsonian, accompanied by

uilos. I joined them all for dinner at Afterwords and we browsed the bookstore and got cupcakes from Hello Cupcake. (While waiting for them I had time to read It's A Book, which was very cute and also had a monkey.)

HC was out of the day's gluten-free cupcakes, which was a disappointment since half the point of going to Dupont was to pick some up so we'd have them the next day. Oh well. The cupcakes they had were delicious and totally worth the trip.

And then we all got up on Satyrday, had pancakes, and (after stopping for gluten-free cupcakes at CakeLove) headed up to the Mansion at Strathmore in Bethesda, so we could get married at four o'clock.

We got there a little after three, and engaged in as much of the obligatory running around and getting organized as we could before getting shangaied into the obligatory picture-taking. Eventually we fought our way free of the soul-sucking cameras and retreated upstairs for a few last minutes of calm before the storm.

The wedding itself was somewhere between "pretty good" and "amazing." My aunt Susan (my favorite blood relative) came up from Atlanta, so even the obligatory 'family' part wasn't so bad.

uilos looked fantastic in her dark green velvet dress. I even clean up okay myself; sadly, with the jacket I couldn't easily show off my awesome new trilobite cufflinks. We milled about and talked to the guests for awhile, and then had a quick ceremony involving John M. Ford's 'Declaration of Unity' (with many thanks to

baranoouji for officiating!). After that things settled into conversation and tasty hors d'oeuvres.

And then there was cake. Oh my, there was cake.

rislyn outdid herself: a traditional red velvet cake with cream cheese icing, a spice cake with maple buttercream, and a two-tier white cake with delectable key lime buttercream icing. All of which were somewhere north of 'fantastic.' Luckily we'd fully expected the cake to be the main event: the program cover had CAKE AND ICE CREAM in large print and 'after the ceremony' somewhat smaller underneath. (The gluten-free cupcakes were for the gluten-allergic guests, of whom there was at least one.)

Sometime after that they handed round champagne flutes, and I realised that a) we needed to short-circuit the 'toast the bride and groom' bit before it killed us both dead of embarrassment, and b) we hadn't formally acknowledged the author of the Declaration. So we stood up in front of everyone and I babbled semicoherently about Mr Ford for a few minutes, during which I failed to explain either why people were rsvping to an email address labeled "wordsareinadequate" or how when his name comes up there's always someone who says, "oh, the author of [How Much For Just The Planet? / The Final Reflection / The YELLOW Clearance Black Box Blues / The Dragon Waiting / 110 Stories]! I didn't know he'd done anything else!" And everyone clinked glasses and drank champagne and went back to the cake and conversation, as it should be.

(I note with amusement that

uilos and I didn't actually have to sign anything at all at the actual ceremony: as far as the state of Maryland is concerned, our involvement with the wedding ended when we got the marriage license.)

We attempted to organize a post-wedding dinner at Zengo but were foiled by a lack of advance planning. So instead we invited people back to our place for pizza and gaming, also as it should be.

Pictures will be up at some point, once people get back to us with them.

Sunday we got up and saw our Texan visitors off, and stopped by my parents' place for my father's birthday lunch. Then we came home and collapsed for several hours.

People keep asking me if I feel any different. The only answer I've been able to come up with is "Now I have less cake."