There Is No Cat

The Honeymoon is Over

Well, we finally did it. In the words of my brother in his toast at the event, six and a half short years after getting engaged, Laura and I finally got married.

The wedding was last Sunday, April 27, in the quaint Victorian Jersey Shore resort town of Ocean Grove, just a few miles from our house. We got married at 11:30 in the morning in a pavillion on the boardwalk, with the ocean as our backdrop. The ceremony was performed by the mayor after a friend of ours who is a non-denominational minister had to back out because of illness (he was able to attend however, and we were delighted that he felt well enough to do that). The weather was absolutely perfect, with the temperature in the mid-60s and just enough clouds in the sky to make it interesting (and to make the photographer’s life a bit easier). The reception was a pretty low-key event, held at a B&B about a block away from the wedding location. We didn’t want to spend money on a band or DJ, so the groom made up four CDs of some of our favorite tunes to foist upon our guests spin. Most of the songs were instrumental so that people could carry on conversations without being distracted by the music, but with an attempt to make the music interesting enough that people could enjoy it if they listened to it. We threw in some vocal songs that were particularly important to us, like one tune from the album that was responsible for us meeting in the first place. For a good part of the reception, the music was drowned out by conversation, so I think it served its purpose in setting the mood we wanted. All the people I talked to said it was an excellent wedding, and a few even said it was the best they’d been to. Now, I don’t expect that anyone who wasn’t having a good time would come up and tell the bride and groom that, but it was still nice to hear from people that they had a good time.

I’ve mentioned the wedding here a few times, but always in a pretty non-specific way. That was because Laura had asked me not to post the date on the web until it happened, because she was worried that someone would read it and break into our house while we were away on our honeymoon. Laugh if you want, but when she said that it reminded me of the time when I was a kid and we attended the funeral of my great-uncle Ray. When my grandparents got home after the service, they found that their house had been burglarized. So I was sympathetic to the argument. (That was also one reason I made a post to my blog on the morning of the wedding, Shirley. Nobody would think that a groom would be relaxed enough to post an entry to his blog on the morning he was getting married, right? Besides, there had been a lot of discussion in Blogistan in recent months about post sublimation, the act of posting about something when you’re really writing about something else. I thought that writing about being in a tux was a nice way to write about the wedding without writing about the wedding, even though I wore a suit instead of a tux. I just wish I had finished adding the time-delayed posting facility to my content management system before the honeymoon so that nobody would have known we were gone....)

Now that it’s over and we’re back from our 3-night, 4-day honeymoon in the tacky splendor of the Pocono Mountains (complete with champagne glass-shaped whirlpool and heart-shaped in-room swimming pool), it’s safe to mention. I had put together a site to tell guests stuff they needed to know about the wedding. It was password protected before the wedding for the reasons above, but if you want to look at it now, it’s open to everyone. I’ll be adding more stuff to the site in coming weeks and months, like the story of how we got engaged (that’s a pretty good one), and photos taken by friends, and hopefully the text of the wonderful and funny toast my brother gave at the wedding. I’m also hoping to write up my memories of the weekend some time this weekend, before they all disappear from short-term memory. Anyone out there who attended and has an interesting story to tell or photos to view, please feel free to contact me and share so I can post it to the site.

Posted at 8:24 PM