Pat and Jen's Wedding

Thumbnail: Before getting married

Though some­what hec­tic, every­thing worked out in the end for Pat and Jen’s wed­ding.

Preparations

I missed the wed­ding rehearsal because I had to close the books for the month at work. I did­n’t get to Pat’s place until 9:30 that night, which went late into the morn­ing as loose ends were tied up, and Jason and I stayed up until 3:00 am to fin­ish the slide show.

The girls got even less sleep I’m sure; the last I saw them they were gig­gling in bed like a high-school sleep­over.

Before leav­ing for Jason’s place to stay the night (leav­ing the house for the girls), Pat gave me God of War 2 and Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal as gifts for being in the wed­ding par­ty.

Thumbnail: Kevin and me in the car
Thumbnail: The edge of downtown
Thumbnail: Groomsmen boutonniere
Thumbnail: Ken pins my boutonniere

In the morn­ing we woke up at sev­en, had some muffins and cof­fee, dec­o­rat­ed the cars, got dressed, and raced to the church.

The Ceremony

Thumbnail: Jason helps Pat with his boutonnière

Due to my miss­ing the rehearsal, I did almost every­thing wrong. I faced the wrong way, walked down the wrong aisle, got up at the wrong time, and laughed it all off.

Pat, Mr. Robot, Mr. Logic, had tears of joy in his eyes as Jen walked down the aisle. I could see the emo­tion in his face and eyes, and was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly shocked and touched. I think he got his wish, and dis­cov­ered that he loves Jen more than he real­ized.

The cer­e­mo­ny was short and sweet, in a grand church with too much echo.

Afterward, we stepped into a limo that chauf­feured us down­town for the pic­tures, on a day that you could­n’t ask for bet­ter weath­er.

Photos

Thumbnail: Jen stepping into the limo
Thumbnail: Bridesmaids in the limo
Thumbnail: Wedding party downtown
Thumbnail: Wedding party on a street corner
Thumbnail: Party in the market
Thumbnail: Sitting in EQ3
Thumbnail: Groomsmen piggyback bridesmaids
Thumbnail: The wedding party pretending to be bored

Wedding par­ty pho­tos were tak­en in the Courtyard, which is a stone brick patio in the mid­dle of the down­town mar­ket. Then Pat and Jen (with Lin hold­ing her train) went off to take more pic­tures, so the rest of us walked around the mar­ket for the rest of the time.

Reception

Thumbnail: Me and Jason as MCs
Thumbnail: Wedding table setting
Thumbnail: Trading candy
Thumbnail: Peekaboo
Thumbnail: Christine peeks
Thumbnail: Applause for speeches
Thumbnail: Wedding favor — dim sum steamer
Thumbnail: Wedding favor — dim sum steamer

There were a few hic­cups through the night — time issues, audio issues — but noth­ing that could­n’t be solved.

It was a good feel­ing to be an MC, mak­ing deci­sions on the fly, mak­ing sure every­thing went smooth­ly. It was almost as if every bit of my char­ac­ter, every­thing I’ve gained — from my con­fi­dence to my strength — was lead­ing up to this day to make sure every­thing went well. I felt impor­tant, like I could do some­thing for Pat after all the things he’s done for me, and that was the best part.

Thumbnail: Aaron eats sharks fin soup
Thumbnail: Lobster with garlic and onion course
Thumbnail: Salt and pepper shrimp course
Thumbnail: Deep friend chicken course

Dinner was a glut­to­nous Chinese nine-course meal spread out over four hours, the order as fol­lows:

  1. Roast duck, roast pork
  2. Deep fried crab claws
  3. Shark fin soup with Chinese red vine­gar on the side
  4. Lobster with gin­ger & onions
  5. Salt & pep­per shrimp
  6. Steamed sea bass
  7. Deep fried chick­en
  8. Shitake mush­rooms and baby bok choy
  9. Yeung Chow fried rice and e‑fu noo­dles

Unfortunately, Jason and I were too busy to eat, but we got a taste of each dish. It worked out when we had room for dessert, which was a gorg­ing of rich sweets.

Thumbnail: To the floor
Thumbnail: Pat blindfolded
Thumbnail: Pat feels Jen
Thumbnail: Pat on his knees

There were three games; this one had Pat look­ing for pins on Jen’s dress while he was blind­fold­ed. Even Pat’s mom sug­gest­ed putting a pin in a provoca­tive spot, and Pat told us he thought she was try­ing to get them to have kids.

Thumbnail: The cake feint
Thumbnail: Pat gets cake in the face
Thumbnail: Trading cake

There were also a few unex­pect­ed sur­pris­es, even though I was involved in the plan­ning of the wed­ding. Countertenor D. Kai Ma sang an opera for us, a capel­la, in an extreme­ly con­trolled falset­to at the end of the speech­es. Also, Pat and Jen did a med­ley for the first dance, start­ing out with a for­mal Latin dance, into robot­ics to Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, then break danc­ing.

There were a cou­ple breaks in the night where I could sit and relax before run­ning off to get the next part going.

Casino

The wed­ding favors — minia­ture dim sum steam­ers filled with can­dy — includ­ed a five dol­lar gift cer­tifi­cate to the casi­no that night, so after every­thing was squared away and the guests went their sep­a­rate ways, the wed­ding par­ty went to the casi­no.

I’ve nev­er gam­bled in my life and offered to give Pat my mon­ey, cit­ing my poor luck late­ly, but he refused to accept it. Katie and I pooled our mon­ey togeth­er to bet on the horse races, and along with the ones with decent odds, she kept bet­ting on a horse called “A Girl To Remember”. We stopped as soon as we were up, by two dol­lars no less, split the mon­ey, and shook hands. Pat proved me wrong.

It was around three when we went home, exhaust­ed from cer­e­monies, pic­tures, and a lack of sleep.

Post-wedding Party

Thumbnail: Chinese roast duck, soy chicken, barbecue pork, porkchops, sausages, and greek salad with rice
Thumbnail: Around the table
Thumbnail: Alex concentrates on his chess game
Thumbnail: Jen takes chess piece
Thumbnail: Sophia
Thumbnail: Jellybean cheers
Thumbnail: Amy tries Jellybean
Thumbnail: Pat spits out his jellybean
Thumbnail: Pat and Jen sing
Thumbnail: Opening wedding presents
Thumbnail: Paper cranes on wrapping paper
Thumbnail: Pat's George Foreman impression
Thumbnail: Cranes on card

The next day, Pat and Jen had us over for a post-wed­ding par­ty, a gath­er­ing to fin­ish off the left­overs from the rehearsal. Even more food was brought over, includ­ing fork-roast­ed bar­be­cue pork, soy sauce chick­en, and duck, and I think they end­ed up with more left­overs than they start­ed with.

Thumbnail: Pat getting into the wedding dress
Thumbnail: Pat getting comfortable
Thumbnail: Pat pads his bra
Thumbnail: Pat gets dragged downstairs
Thumbnail: Pat gets paraded in his dress

Jen want­ed Pat to put on the wed­ding dress, which he agreed to do if the eight “kids” would sing on Karaoke Revolution. I don’t think he expect­ed us to call his bluff, because he ran away when the last duet fin­ished singing. When we final­ly got him in the dress, Jen and Amy had to drag him down­stairs to face the par­ents.

A Great Group of People

The wed­ding par­ty was a very unique group. I relate to Jen in find­ing it very dif­fi­cult to make friends. We’re both extreme­ly picky peo­ple, and per­haps this is why I got along with hers so well. She describes her friends as gen­er­ous, but what stands out to me is also how polite and friend­ly they are. You can judge a per­son by their friends, and it’s a per­fect reflec­tion of both Pat and Jen.

10 comments

  1. Great pic­tures!!! I like your blog entry too. I had a great time while I was in Ottawa, and I had so much fun hang­ing out with every­one again and meet­ing all the new peo­ple. Now you guys have to come out and vis­it me :D Btw, I have no idea why you guys vol­un­teered to pig­gy-back us back to the limo…

    Also I would­n’t say you and Jen are picky… just have high stan­dards. ;)

  2. The wed­ding was, by far, the best one I’ve ever been to. I’ve come to real­ize that the peo­ple make all the dif­fer­ence. We def­i­nite­ly need to head down there to see you guys (and as an excuse for me to get more pic­ture-tak­ing in).

    And high stan­dards is a bet­ter way of putting it. :)

  3. Looks like an awe­some time man, great pho­tos too. The set­up you have here on your site for images and text is quite excel­lent.

  4. Thanks, Mike! It took me a while to get every­thing just right. This is the eighth revi­sion of the site, and it’s only now that I feel sat­is­fied with it.

  5. Yeah I was going to say, I like the way you cus­tomized word­press. Right now I’m just using some­one else’s tem­plate :p

    How far are you in FFXII? I real­ly enjoyed it… although I fin­ished it like a month after it came out so that was awhile ago.

  6. I thought your site was “Coming soon”. Do you have a blog host­ed by WordPress.com? There are a bunch of awe­some tem­plates out there, but noth­ing that fit exact­ly what I was try­ing to present, so I made my own.

    A month?! Pat gave it to me in March, and I’m only at the Second Ascent in the Pharos. Just passed the 100 hour mark too, though I played more than that just reset­ting the game to get stuff like get the Zodiac Eschuteon. Did you rush through it, or did you do every side-quest/­mark?

  7. Yeah, about the com­ing soon part… I don’t think it’s com­ing lol. I’m too lazy to learn enough about Dreamweaver to get a front page start­ed. I want it real­ly sim­ple. Are tem­plates hard to make? I just put up my blog http://www.soapymoose.com/blog since I put up the gallery, I fig­ured it’s a small step toward even­tu­al­ly hav­ing a web site. I used to have one at http://www.vaelin.com when I first moved out here. It’s still there, just not updat­ed.

    I’ve had so many blogs over the last few years, includ­ing an online jour­nal when I had my first web site up. Hopefully I’ll just keep this one from now on.

    Oh and I’m the type to zip through the game. Pssh, side quests. I don’t have enough time for that! It still took me like 67 hours to com­plete the game though. I cheat and use the guide so I did­n’t mess up with the Zodiac. It’s stu­pid though eh? The require­ments I mean, the weapon is sweet. I like Balthier, he’s sexy.

  8. Templates aren’t hard to make if you know PHP and CSS, which are what WordPress is based on. The hard­est part I find is writ­ing CSS, so sim­ple lay­outs are fair­ly easy. I did the whole mul­ti-blog, “new begin­ning” thing too, but even­tu­al­ly tried to stick with one. I’ll have to add your blog to my dai­ly blogroll…none of my friends blog, and it’s always nice to read about peo­ple whom I’ve actu­al­ly met!

  9. Gorgeous wed­ding recep­tion and looks so much fun all around.…. & Those tiny dim sum steam­ers! Adorable. Damn. Now I’m hun­gry for all that stuff…

  10. That’s the prob­lem with Chinese food pic­tures. You’re always hun­gry after you look at them.

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