Wedding Weekend, part one: Wednesday/Thursday

Wedding Weekend - part 1 (Wednesday/Thursday)

We drove out to Rochester on Wednesday - thank goodness for the car DVD player and They Might Be Giants - and arrived around dinner time. This was our first time meeting Emily’s soon to be husband, Russell. They are so cute together! Russell is very nice and has a cute Southern accent which I’m sure Emily will pick up after a few months.

Thursday morning, we awoke to find that someone had festooned the vans in the driveway with CAUTION tape, and that said person or persons had drawn dead body chalk outlines in the driveway...

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On Thursday I drove out to Eastview Mall with my mom’s dress - they forgot to remove the ink tag when she bought it (D’oh!) and Mom was super busy having a pedicure that morning. When I got home, Mike and Mandy were on their way to have sushi with Kevin, Catherine, and two of Mandy’s cousins. (Did I mention that Mandy’s family was also having a family reunion that weekend? Talk about good timing.) I’ve been meaning to try sushi for quite some time, and I knew that Mandy would be a good culinary tour guide since she has spent a lot of time in Japan. So, I abandoned my kids (Thank you, Matt!) and headed to Calfornia Rollin’…

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…where I participated in a feast of raw fish and yummy goodness. I’ve never even used chopsticks before (at least, not successfully), let alone used them to eat sushi. And I have to say… I LOVED it. I loved the miso soup (a.k.a. liquid happiness), I loved the pickled ginger, I loved the salmon the best, and I even liked the wasabi which I thought I would hate since I don’t really like hot stuff. It doesn’t taste hot, necessarily, just really, really mustardy.

After sushi, some of us headed over to Holy Cross for the wedding rehearsal. This is when Betsy finally realized she was actually going to be in the wedding, though we’ve been telling her for weeks that Aunty Emmy is getting married to Uncle Russy. (Betsy is currently obsessed with weddings. She thinks she’s getting married to James, a boy from church.) There was one teeny, tiny glitch when Emily couldn’t find the marriage license. My dad made a detailed phone call to the records office and came up with a plan B involving picking up a spare first thing in the morning - because I’m sure they aren’t the first couple in the world that has misplaced a marriage license…

The most important part of the rehearsal was of course the rehearsal dinner. It was held at the house and catered by the Dinosaur; I’ve never eaten there but it’s basically Dick’s Bodacious of Rochester. Oh, so yummy. Emily had ordered a groom’s cake shaped like a guitar, and my mom’s friend Heidi made a massive pile of cookies.

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That’s Russell stabbing the cake.

They also gave gifts to the members of the wedding party. Emily did a great job of selecting gifts that were really thoughtful and useful. (Ask Russell’s stepdad what time it is…) She gave Betsy a silver jewelry box with a butterfly pin inside, and she gave me a sweet tote bag with my name engraved on a charm. Emily intended for it to be for carrying scrapbooking supplies but that weekend it morphed into the Magic Bag (my mom calls it Incredibag) because we kept putting everything that was really important in the bag to take to the church. I think at one point I had glue dots, baby wipes, everyone’s keys and cell phone, concealer, lipstick, Emily’s purse and Betsy’s coloring book in there.

If the marriage license had been in the Magic Bag, it never would have gotten lost. Luckily, Emily found it that night.

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After the rehearsal dinner was finally over and all the leftovers were put away… then it was time for my mom to work on the dresses.