Wedding, Ireland, Scooter

John and I got married, as you may have guessed from all of the references to the wedding John has been making. It was really great. Before the wedding I mostly sat around and did girly things, like having my hair done and putting on make-up. However, the guys were apparently working their butts off setting up the ceremony and reception site. Some of the highlights include the best man and maid of honor speeches, the first dance, the bouquet toss (I hit the ceiling on the first attempt!), watching Kate boogey down with my little sister, and seeing all the people I love most in one room. It was a great day. And I guess that guy I married made it a good day too.

Then we went to Ireland, which was awesome. As soon as I figure out how to post pictures, I will put them up with some explanations of what we did.

And now we’ve bought a scooter. It rocks. I will put those pictures up at some point too. But I promise you, John looks really cute on it.

Wedding – pre-events – Rehearsal

Though initially a joke, we decided to do the rehearsal at Toby Keith’s I Love this Bar and Grill in Bricktown.  While I know this sounds ridiculous, it’s close to our wedding cite in the gardens and they have something for everyone.

Before the dinner, Lisa and I met our officiant – Reverend Lofton.  She was a wonderfully nice and funny lady and I think we both felt that we had made the right choice.  After talking to her for about 30 minutes, the three of us walked over to the gardens for a walk through.  The wedding party met us over there as did the musicians, and we walked quickly through the ceremony twice.

After that, everyone packed up and went over to Toby Keith’s.  We had a nice long dinner with tons of food and appetizers and gave gifts to Zach, Sam, Kate, and Tracy.

Maybe the best part of the night were the speeches that the dads made.  Bob’s was based around the central metaphor of child birth and our 9 month engagement.   While the women mostly shook their heads, I liked his point that he now knew something of the pain of child birthing having produced the wedding.  My dad’s speech was based on our agreement when I was a kid that I would wait till I was in my late 20’s to get married and 30 to have kids.  My grandfather was 30 when he had his first kid – my dad – and dad was 30 when he had me.  When I came to my dad at 23 and said I wanted to get married he was understandably surprised, but I told him that I had found the right one.  It was a nice punchline and Lisa even cried a bit so it all went well.

Wedding – pre-events – Bachelor(ette) parties

May 24 was a huge day.  However, first the build-up.

Ryan was the first to get into town for the wedding.  He came in the Sunday before, so Zach and I got to hang out with him for a few days before things got crazy.  Needless to say much ESPN insued.

Midweek, the rest of the guys came in along with my sister.  We had a bit of time to hang out, but the main events midweek were the bachelor and bachelorette parties.  My party started a bit earlier than anticipated because the champions league final was on at 1:30.  The Man U – Chelsea match was the first all English Euro final in like 50 years and was a one game recap of the league battle between the two teams.  Though Chelsea probably played better, my Red Devils prevailed in penalty kicks and got their second trophy of the campaign.

After that, we all got dressed and the girls split from the guys.  Event one on our agenda was dinner at Spaghetti Warehouse.  Zach had somehow reserved the banquet room, though we didn’t have nearly enough people to meet the minimum.  Still it was nice to have our own room to sit around and tell old stories.  After a relatively quick dinner, we moved on to stop two, the Bricktown Brewery.  There we drank like half a keg along bit of liquor, while playing poker.  When they closed at a shockingly early 11pm, we went to my favorite bar, Maker’s Cigar Lounge.  I finished off my complete drunkenness and smoked a cigar.  On the whole, it was a fantastic night and I met everyone’s expectation for sloppiness.

The more surprising part of the night was how messed up the girls got Lisa.  Through a similar dinner and bars pattern, Kate got together like 12 girls to send Lisa off in style.  Apparently Marty also had a few drinks and let loose the family secrets.  Lisa then spent the end of the night trying to call me and being foiled by everyone under the sea.  When I finally got home at 3am – after a late night drunken IHOP run – we stumbled into each others arms and went very happily to sleep.

Graduation

Again, sorry for the delays.  I’m going to try to make several posts in the next few days to get up to date on everything.

Lisa’s grandparents along with my sister came into town for our graduation ceremony, so we felt somewhat obligated to show up as well.  On the whole the event went fairly well.  We made it to the party mostly on time – a few minutes late – met up with Peter Barker and got to where we needed to be.  Tracy and Mary (Lisa’s mom) sat with the rest of Lisa’s party – Bob, Marty, the kids, and the grandparents.

After some initial confusion both parties spotted the other during the ceremony.  While not conspicuous on our own, Lisa and I were seated near our professors Piers Hale and Suzanne Moon, both of whom had on very brightly colored PhD gowns.

The ceremony itself went relatively well – the speeches didn’t suck – and we got some good pictures (see Pier’s page or the OU departmental page).

After the ceremony we went to lunch.  Getting there was a bit of an adventure.  There was an hour between the arrival of the advance scouting group – Marty and the kids – and the last arrivals – Lisa and Mary.  Lunch lasted like 2 hours and then leaving took another.  Still, we had a good time and got some very nice gifts.

In a related though chronologically distant note, Tracy graduate from high school.  Her valedictorian gave a great speech but the rest of the trip was a bit of a fiasco.  We got lost several times, and on the whole the thing was fairly boring.  Still, I’m very proud of Tracy and look forward to not having any more graduations for at least 3 or 4 years.