A Wedding Saturday

From Ben & Sarah's Wedding public

I have a lot of catching up to do after our whirlwind trip to Florida the past 6 days. The past few posts, the very short ones, were all done from my cell phone using little SMS messages that are limited to only a few words. So in this entry I hope to fill in the gaps a little.

The wedding of Ben and Sarah was the main reason for our trip. Wedding days are usually a blur of activity and socializing... and this one was no different. After sleeping in on Saturday morning we hooked up with my brother and sister-in-law Jerry and Debbie for lunch. They flew down for the ceremony and were able to couple it with a Caribbean cruise out of Miami for the following week. For local transportation (and some fun) they rented an odd-looking Nissan Cube -- a boxy, stubby looking thing that you'd expect a troupe of clowns would be driving in the 4th of July parade. The little restaurant selected for lunch was only a block or two away from their hotel, but maze-like parking lots, dead-end roads, and missed turns made the process of getting there a hilarious affair. We felt like clowns by the time we pulled into the parking lot and casual observers would surely wonder why these four were having such a good time.

The marriage ceremony itself was very nice, and only the second one in the spanking new Catholic church that was just completed a few weeks before (I'm told the first marriage in the church didn't count for some reason... so this one was really the first). All participants held up well despite a few tears that typically accompany marriages... Mother's of the bride and groom cry because they think they're loosing a child, and Father's of the Bride and Groom cry because of their depleted checkbooks.

The advent of digital photography has made it possible for anyone to take as many pictures of every aspect of the day that they want, and people like Dar shoot thousands. I'm sure there were tens of thousands of photos taken during the day, and many hours of video too. Every aspect of the day was documented for posterity.

The reception was held at Breakers West, a golf community with an excellent banquet facility. A top-notch meal was followed by dancing to music provided by a DJ.

In an earlier post I mentioned the scheduled launch of the shuttle Endeavor in the wee hours of Sunday morning. The orientation of our hotel room, facing north, and the third floor elevation made it our best choice for trying to see the launch 130 miles to north. My sister Jan and brother-in-law David, the Mom and Dad of the Groom, struggled over to our room about 4:15am and joined us until we learned the launch was scrubbed due to heavy cloud cover at the Cape. NASA said they'd try again the next morning, Monday, at 4:14am. We had decided to leave for home Sunday afternoon anyway, so this turn of events gave us the opportunity to divert to somewhere much closer to the Space Center for that attempt.

Congratulations to Ben and Sarah as they start they're long life together. And a Big "Thank You" to the parents of the Bride and Groom for a wonderful and fun day.

Thom