Wedding Week: The Celebration!

In case you missed it, yesterday's wedding blog was over at the MTV Books Blog. It was all about the music, which as you know is one of the most important things to me, so it was a pretty fun blog and there are crazy dancing pictures.

Today I just want to pay tribute to all of our loved ones who came out to the wedding. Seeing all of my out of town friends and family was a huge highlight of the wedding for me. The only thing that sucked was not having enough to time to spend with each person.

So this little photo montage of memories might be more for me and my friends than anyone else, but hey I hope everyone enjoys the pictures.

First up, the bachelorette party, which took place at a wine shop in my town called House Red. My lovely maid of honor Katie knows the owner and hooked us up with a private party there. I intentionally had this two days before the wedding so some of my out of town girlies could make it.

Like Jenny and Eryn:

I meet these two online back in 2001 or 2002 on a music messageboard, though since they both have great senses of humor, they kept telling everyone that they'd responded to an ad I put on Craigslist for friends. Jenny lives in St. Louis and Eryn lives in Denver. So we only see each other once a year or so. Eryn and I travel to Seattle together a lot and Jenny came on our original trip out there in 2004. As you can see we have a lot of fun together:

Yes, that is a penis straw. Katie knew I didn't want the typical, tacky bachelorette party, but she did get everyone penis straws in their otherwise classy favor bags. She also insisted I wear the tiara and sash, though I made Eryn wear the shot glass as you see above. Here's a better pic of my outfit and the Betsey Johnson dress that was too short to wear for my wedding:

Also in town early was my dear friend and former roommate Tai, the woman who married us. She's on my left and my maid of honor and bff Katie is on my right:

I also had fun with my in town friends who I don't see nearly enough. Like Jme, who also used to work at the Beacon. You can tell she was a bartender cause she's good at putting up with drunk people while being sober. She's pregnant so she couldn't really join in the wine drinking:

Amber and Katie live in Chicago, but I don't see them nearly enough. We lived together in LA for a semester and I wish we could hang out as often as we did then. Here's a nice picture of us:

And this is more like we normally are:

Then there is my friend Jenny. I guess I actually do see her often because we have a weekly writing group together and she lives a couple blocks away from me. But still she is always fun to hang with:


Eryn took this really cool picture of the group through a wine glass:

And here's a nice group photo. Yay for fun bachelorette party!

The night before the wedding we got our out of town family and friends together for dinner in order to spend more time with them. I got to catch up a little bit with my cousin (a couple times removed or something) Amanda, who I haven't seen since she was two years old:

I also saw my cousin Nathan, pictured here with my mom. Hadn't seen him in way too long either:

And here my uncle Stevie tries to get my aunt Pam to drink Sake. Again it's been way too long since I've seen them:

Here are my brothers. My half-brother Evan was falling asleep, so my brother Dan was chilling with him:

Jenny, Eryn and I have a tradition of drinking Midori Sours whenever we are together. It took the bartender so long to make these we thought they were making the Midori from scratch. Eryn looks a little displeased by this:


At the wedding I got to see more out of town folks like my cousin Becca:

Like my darling friend Anna and her boyfriend Adam arrived from LA and then the LA crew of me, Anna, Amber, and Katie was complete:

Here's another good shot of me and Amanda:

Jenny's husband Jim got to town and the made a smashing couple:

And here's a good bride and her mama shot:

One of my high school bffs Thea and her husband Justin came and Thea and Katie got to catch up:

The Columbia Crew Amber, Anna, Katie, Jenny and Aaron. Jenny and Aaron are my writing group:

Katie, Aaron and I used to work in the Fiction Dept at Columbia together. Good times.

And here is Kathy, I used to work with her at UIC. Now Katie has my job there. Look out College of Nursing. This is your support staff!

Here is Kathy's boyfriend Joe. Nice hair! He runs a barbershop you know.

My Girls. I'm sad I don't have a solo shot with my new sis-in-law Kelly. Hopefully the professional photographer got one:

Scott's boys:

And here were are with our best friends, my maid of honor Katie and Scott's best man, Chris:

They both made toasts to us and so did my dad:

Chris threatened that his toast would be 13 pages long, but he kept it short and sweet. He also actually got nervous and spilled his champagne:

Katie's speech was awesome. She made reference to the first time we hung out at my house when my dad referred to her as "that weird girl" probably because she was 14 and I was 15 and we were all hyped up on sugar and coffee, getting ready to go hang out with boys we liked we were screaming the words "BUTT!" and "FIRE!" ala Beavis and Butthead:

But I think the coolest part was seeing my friends who didn't know each other until that weekend become friends. Like here is Eryn bonding with Katie and Tai, but don't ask me what the hell they are doing:

And here is Eryn with Mario and Jose:

I could post a million more pictures but I'll stop for now and conclude wedding week tomorrow!