August 31, 2008

Our Wedding



So much has happened since my last post that I don't really know where to start. Generally I'm inspired by Emily's photographs, but in the last couple of weeks she's taken about five thousand of them - this is going to take a couple of blog entries.

First things first - we're now married. We had a lovely wedding, which went perfectly. I was expecting something to go wrong - they say it always does - but it was great. People had fun, the setting was beautiful, and our dance worked out well.

Emily will go into better detail on her blog, but here is my summary:

We had an intimate wedding at the Acqua Hotel in Mill Valley, about 40 people were able to attend. The wedding was outdoors, on a lovely little lake with the mountains in the background.

The rehearsal dinner was down the street at Buckeye Roadhouse - a place that we happened across a few years ago after hiking in the Marin Headlands, which turned out to be in the list of top 100 bay area restaurants. They did an excellent job, details to follow.

It was a little cool out, but the guys didn't notice in their tuxes. After the ceremony, there was a cocktail hour, which started a little earlier than planned. During that time, Emily and I had photographs taken. After the cocktail hour, we had a sit-down dinner catered by Piazza D'Angelo in Mill Valley.



After a bit of mingling, we had our first dance, a foxtrot choreographed by Alyson - the part of the wedding I was most nervous about. It went really well, despite a couple of missteps on my part and Emily having the extra difficulty of dancing in a wedding dress. Learning the dance was a lot of fun. Alyson did a really good job teaching us the dance and designing a beautiful and cute dance that matched our skill level. (I got the easy part.)

The cake was beautiful. Emily had gotten a spiced "Carrot Cake" from the Shannie Cakes. She did the cake tasting with Alyson, so I hadn't tasted it before the wedding. When we did the cake cutting, I decided that the cake was really good and we should do a second take. I'm sure the photographers appreciated it.

There were a lot of people who were unable to make it - travel has gotten expensive and budgets have gotten tight - but the size was really nice. We were able to spend a lot of time with each guest, eat our entire meal, and have a fun, relaxing time. We hope to have a reception in Michigan around the holidays to catch up with some of the people who couldn't make it.

After the wedding we spent the night at the Acqua Hotel, got up the next morning and got ready for our honeymoon on the big island of Hawaii.

to be continued...