so, that was a (Paper-ful) weekend
Jan. 31st, 2011 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishAs previously mentioned, rbandrews and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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 thatuilos 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."
rbandrews and 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."
no subject
Date: 2011-01-31 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-31 09:10 pm (UTC)oops
Date: 2011-01-31 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-31 09:22 pm (UTC)Unless things have changed in the 12 years since I picked up a MD wedding license, it's entirely possible to get married in MD with only one half of the marriage couple signing stuff, and even then only the paperwork to pick up the license- one could theoretically marry someone without them knowing about it.
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Date: 2011-01-31 10:00 pm (UTC)Re: oops
Date: 2011-01-31 10:00 pm (UTC)(We still have the top half of the key lime one in the freezer. Mmmmmmmm, cake.)
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Date: 2011-01-31 10:02 pm (UTC)VA also does the lack of signing things except when you pick up the paperwork, which meant we had to come up with something else to put into our ceremony semi-last-minute to make it more than two minutes long. Hee!
Now I want cupcakes.
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Date: 2011-01-31 10:06 pm (UTC)I think Maryland redid a number of their marriage-related laws in 2005. I know that prior to that point, the only qualification for the officiant was that zie be someone who both participants recognized as being someone qualified to perform weddings. Now you actually have to have the certificate from the ULC.
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Date: 2011-01-31 10:09 pm (UTC)2. regarding the not signing of things, I had remarked upon that as well when I was married. In addition to this, Spouse had obtained our marriage license by using my expired, hole-punched passport, that being the only document available to him while I was out of town that week.
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Date: 2011-02-01 01:57 am (UTC)I think our actual ceremony ran under five minutes. I figure that was about long enough to make everyone stand around and be formal.
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Date: 2011-02-01 02:10 am (UTC)Yeah, our ceremony might have lasted ten, with music and poem-beforehand... which would have been more impressive if almost our entire audience hadn't been there for the walkthrough 15 minutes before. But we had chairs. :)
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Date: 2011-02-01 02:28 am (UTC)Congratulations!
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Date: 2011-02-01 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 04:04 am (UTC)*laugh* We did at least do the walkthrough-fifteen-minutes-beforehand in the dressing room upstairs.
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Date: 2011-02-01 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 07:42 pm (UTC)Congratulations to you both!
Date: 2011-02-02 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-31 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-31 09:51 pm (UTC)It was lovely, and you were both ever so cute, too.
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Date: 2011-01-31 10:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 01:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 01:47 am (UTC)gettin' hitchedproviding the cake and ice cream, so it's all good. :)(And I really am glad you managed to make it, too.)
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Date: 2011-02-01 02:33 am (UTC)And, thank you. :) It's one of those things where /I/ thought it was pretty cool, but it's at least partly meant for other people, and in retrospect I'm not quite sure how well it came off... it's good to hear that people enjoyed it.
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Date: 2011-02-01 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 03:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 03:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 05:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 03:19 pm (UTC)That was a wonderful and unusual thing (wonderful, especially, because it meant that time was you both relaxing with friends rather than running around frantically like many couples are at the wedding hour).
I think because of it being everyone mingling, including the bride and groom and officiant -> move together to one room to gather and witness the happy moment --> back to mingling. . . somehow that really contributed to the feeling of village and community Joe was noting.
And it seemed to perfectly fit you both :)
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Date: 2011-02-01 04:16 pm (UTC)I'm glad I could make it too!
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Date: 2011-02-01 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 06:50 pm (UTC)So, I'm really glad that came through, and thank you.
Congrats.
Date: 2011-02-01 09:17 pm (UTC)Re: Congratulations to you both!
Date: 2011-02-02 04:37 am (UTC)Re: Congrats.
Date: 2011-02-02 05:05 am (UTC)Re: Congrats.
Date: 2011-02-02 12:37 pm (UTC)When we did our cupcake tasting we hit up baked and wired, georgetown cupcake and hello cupcake all in the same day reaching hello cupcake *last* at which point you would think we would be sick of cupcakes.
Our conclusion was that the quality and tastiness of HC was uniformly the best.. Mind you I did have a certain fondness for one of baked and wireds cupcakes . ( so yes individual stores might have one or two cupcakes that are a little better than the others) but overall HC still wins for us.
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Date: 2011-02-02 06:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-03 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-03 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-03 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-06 05:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-06 02:39 pm (UTC)