Friday, September 17th, 2004 | 4:07 pm
It’s good to be back here on the LJ. We had some incredible storm action last night (incredible for Atlanta, anyway… I’m sure it doesn’t compare to what my parents went through with Frances). My drive home was, oh, two hours long, through 18-inch deep water from creeks washing over Buford Highway. We’re apparently pretty lucky to have power at all; over 200,000 are without power this morning in Atlanta alone. Actually, a huge tree came down on Briarcliff about 2.5 miles from our apartment, knocking out power for our entire area, right up to a few blocks from us. Cable’s out, so we missed all the shows we wanted to see last night. Can’t we just get full video on demand already, so that we can see what we want, when we want? I mean, that’s why I got a Tivo, but if there’s nothing for the Tivo to record, it doesn’t really matter when we decide to watch it. It’s not like they’re going to re-air the shows we missed (The Apprentice, Survivor, CSI) just because some folks down south missed them.
Anyway, I’m thankful that at the very least, we still have DSL. It could be much worse. Skippy had a fire occur in the apartment two floors above him, and now has an apartment full of wet stuff and mold. The result? Heather and I now have a roommate. Skippy’s sleeping on our futon until his apartment gets cleaned up. I’ve gotta say, it’s interesting having someone else in the house and being married. It’s like college, only Heather and I have to clean up after each other a little more and the chores actually get done.
Thursday, September 16th, 2004 | 3:37 pm
Wedding Photos
I’m coming back to the journal not because of any huge changes (of which there have been several) and not because I have a dire need to inform anyone about anything. I just want to post some of this stuff because if I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll forget all the details that I wanted to write down.
Let’s see, when I last wrote, it was May. Wedding plans and preparations were swirling around and Heather had finished school. She wrapped up her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the same time and from there, May, June, and July are kind of a blur to me. I remember working, going to kickboxing, going to a wedding, going camping… That’s about it.
No, I don’t mean my wedding. I actually remember that. The wedding was gorgeous, and the entire month couldn’t have gone any better.
Family and friends trickled into town throughout the week before. I only took the Friday before off, so it was a very antsy week at work for me. Heather fared very well in the face of the typically bone-crushing stress I hear is common for women during the few weeks before the event. She and I even got to have dinner alone together a few nights that week, which was important to us.
The day before the wedding, Friday, I was finally off work and able to get the last-minute preparations made. We had a golf outing (My Dad, Heather’s Stepdad/his Dad, Skippy, Scott (Best Man), Craig (Uncle), and my Dad’s friend Tom). I get to actually play a round of golf maybe 5-6 times a year, so it was of course a lot of fun. The girls went to the spa, and from what I hear, did mystical girl things at the spa like doing their nails.
The Rehearsal/ Rehearsal Dinner
The rehearsal dinner was tons o’ fun, and the island theme worked out quite well. I think I was the sole consumer of about seven pounds of coconut shrimp, and the wedding party had a few cases of wine on our own, but what’s a party without shellfish and Cabernet?
Here’s the whole bridal party posing outside the tennis club, trying not to look too eager to get back in to the chicken fingers.
The rehearsal itself was kind of interesting. I’m not sure if it prepared me much for the event itself, and in fact I felt less prepared afterward. We went through the motions but at every stage, Heather and I kind of looked at each other, shrugged, and said “Do we just stand here?” or “Which way do we face?” to each other while the wedding coordinator ran around arranging everyone just so.
Looking back, it was really the right amount of preparation. Had we done a rote rehearsal of the ceremony, word for word, and gone through all of the motions even once, some of the magic of the occasion would have been lost.
After the rehearsal dinner, I went home on my own. Maybe the last night of “bachelorhood” didn’t hit me the way it should have… I just sat in bed thinking… Thinking about where I was, where I was going, what I was about to do. I think I watched a few episodes of The Simpsons and stayed up til 12:30 or so. My suitcase for the honeymoon, which had been sitting open and empty for the better part of a week, finally got a few more last-minute items thrown into it.
It was odd. There was no more anticipation than before, which is not to say that I wasn’t excited; it just wasn’t reaching a fevered pace like it would the next day. There was an almost serene sense of readiness, like what I would imagine an astronaut feels the day before a launch. He’s been preparing for this moment for years of his life. Nothing about the logistics of the moment will be exceedingly strange or new, at least nothing that he can foresee.
The Wedding
I woke up the morning of the wedding at 7 or 7:30, and drove over to the hotel, the Grand Hyatt in Buckhead, to check in. They were very helpful, and a very nice German woman upgraded us to a suite on the top floor, which is also the club level. In fact, she also let me check in at 8am, a full 9 hours early, without paying for an extra day. I dragged our suitcases into the beautiful room and took note of the absolutely gorgeous view of the city. The sun was coming up and the weather was perfect. It struck me that the next time I saw that room, it would be with my new wife.
Update 2005-02-09
Since I would need my car to be at the hotel (we spent the whole weekend in Atlanta), Scott picked me up at the hotel and we made our way up to Norcross, to meet the rest of the groomsmen. Stephen got dropped off from his hotel at the Dewhurst’s house. I brought a bottle of Crown Royal that Craig Hoover had recently given me for my birthday. We arrived, one by one, at the Dewhurst residence.
TOPICS STILL TO DISCUSS
driving to the wedding, seeing heather
milling around waiting for it to happen
the ceremony
getting photos taken, standing out in the heat! being wiped off by brenda
dancing
the toasts
the cake
getting in the limo (it rains for 20 minutes only, then stops!)
taking a nap in the hotel room because of being wiped out, eating takeout from the wedding
Rock Bottom Brewery
I’ll continue/finish this entry when I have time.
