Yawn - Back to Work

Well, the honeymoon is done (note I did not say over) and our wedding party has wound up. It was a real joy to see so many friends and relatives Saturday. We booked the room at the St. Claire the night before in the ginormous Palm Suite. I've never before stayed at a place that had a powder room before the bathroom. But, since we had ladies getting hair and makeup done starting at 8:15 (!) Saturday morning, it was probably for the best. Around 2:30 or so, the main photographer started taking pictures in earnest. Then we schlepped around downtown SJ taking pictures until 6 or so, then everyone else went to cocktail hour while we went off for more pictures (snif) near the SJ City Hall dome. Mark, our main photographer, noted that our energy seemed a little low towards the end, which seemed about right given Noelle was wearing a 60lb dress and I had a monkey suit on in the 80 degree weather. After that I was ready for a drink or three. We got back to the hotel, got into the entrance line and made our entrance. Then speeches and dinner! The food was really awesome (that's what using Il Fornaio as your caterer gets you) and Noelle secretly arranged to have a string quartet play for dinner, which was fantastic, as I love chamber music at weddings. Our steampunk planetary constellation of wedding cakes turned out really well (unfortunately I have no pictures at present) and really surprised a lot of people, including the people working at the wedding, so I guess it was pretty unusual. People kept asking how it came to be, to which I responded: well, first Noelle found the robot cake toppers and the internet and we thought, "Hmm, we could build a cake around this..." I thought the DJ was just about right: generally unobtrusive, cooperative with our requests for songs, and generally unobnoxious. People kept coming up to us and gushing about what a great party it was, which was tremendously gratifying, since we (and by we I mean primarily Noelle) had put so much work into it the past however many months it's been. I know I was the host, but I thought it was one of the best weddings I've been to. My only regret was that as groom, I spent a lot of time meeting with guests and seeing how they were doing and all that and I didn't get as much time as I would have liked to enjoy the rest of the party, but I guess that's what happens with all brides and grooms. I still managed to have a fantastic time and we had people dancing until midnight, so I would rate that a success. Some of us were actually hanging around the ballroom until 1:30 or so when the workers kicked us out so they could finish cleaning. I was so sore that night that I had a really hard time getting sleep. Poor Noelle got blisters on her feet despite wearing Birkenstocks during most of the shooting. Anyway, it was a really fantastic time, albeit draining. And yesterday we had to haul a bunch of stuff back from the hotel to home, so I didn't really get much rest until late at night. I feel a little sad that it's over, but also kind of relieved. Anyway, it's done and the main wedding photographer posted some pictures on his blog at this site which look pretty good to me. I understand there are a few more coming later. ;-)