The Wedding

What I wrote while waiting for my flight around 12:30 this afternoon:

Oof. Seriously rough around the edges this morning...afternoon. I felt much better when I woke up. Now, am definitely working towards a hangover. Hopefully, water and ibuprofen will help me actually get a little work done on the plane. I mentioned on the way here that my neck is a little sore and Jennings started rattling off all the possible causes: dancing with Kate to Prodigy, helping to carry a keg, not once, but twice, slouching awkwardly for extended periods of time in the passenger seat of his car, and falling asleep on the couch with Sara. Such good times last night. Will have to recount more of them once I'm feeling better.

So now I'm feeling better, although I have to admit also feeling a bit too old for weekends like this. If the recovery curve is this steep, I can't even imagine how I'll feel 20 years from now. Ah well. I flew to Pittsburgh Friday afternoon and spent most of the night hanging out on Jennings's balcony, drinking with his friends. I thought it was humorous that at around 55-60 degrees, it was one of the nicest nights they'd had in Pittsburgh in a while. I told him if we were back in Atlanta most of my friends and I would have already deemed it too cold and moved inside.

Drove up and down the same patch of route 2 through b.f.e. WV Saturday afternoon, then finally attended Nate and Reen's wedding. Two of her younger brothers were the ushers, and they were adorable in their seriousness and concentration on not messing up. Nate and the boys walked out, looking very nervous. Reen walked out looking radiant. Her dress was amazing. Beautiful bell sleeves. Spent much of the ceremony laughing at Kate, who was trying desperately not to laugh while standing up front with the rest of the bridal party. Spent the hour between ceremony and reception at the Lighthouse Grill with Jennings, Steve, Jen, Matt, and Big Geoff. Reception was lots of fun - one big Smith House reunion with a few new faces thrown in. Nate hadn't told the bar tender how to make Sandie's Pinkie Lemonadies, so during dinner I got him to write it down and the tender spent most of the rest of the evening perfecting it. The DJ wasn't very good, but what wedding DJ is? Eventually we started making requests, and Kate and I rocked the dance floor to Prodigy and Bad Touch. Even slipped in a little Country Roads for good measure. Made friends with the extremely cute bar tender (hey, it was an open bar, where do you think we were spending most of our time? by the end of the night I just asked him to make something up, and we all ended up drinking what I dubbed the Chris Tang). Asked him to join us at Nate's friend Ben's house, where all the reception leftovers were headed and we were post-partying, but he never showed up. Ah well. Unlike most other weddings I've attended, Nate and Reen stayed at the reception until the end, and even put in an appearance at the post-party, which I thought was awesome. Sara and I were more than a few sheets to the wind by the time we got the Ben's house, but that didn't stop us from deciding to help carry in one of the kegs. So we walk outside, I realize there's gravel between the end of the porch and the truck containing the keg, and I'm barefoot, so Sara gives me a piggy back ride. Everything is working out well until the family dog comes over and Sara decides to bend over to pet him. Fortunately she swung around and braced us against a nearby car before we both toppled over. We stayed at Ben's for a bit, his tremendously cool parents grilled hot dogs and hamburgers for us around midnight and I had some really great conversations with Kate and Sara. Drove back to Kate's house around 2 am, prompting a drunken post. The four of us hung out, and I plucked about a hundred bobby pins from Sara's hair. Eventually crashed on the pull-out couch in the basement with Jennings. Woke up the next morning and piled into bed with Kate (just like freshman year!) then drank lots of water and coffee and watched Spiderman cartoons before Kate had to leave for work, Sara for Cleveland, and Jennings and I for the airport.

So that was it in a nutshell. A beautiful weekend that flew by way too fast. I took about 40 pictures, which someday will be cleaned up and posted (once I figure out how to use the webspace Emory provides) but it's highly unlikely that will happen before the end of June, so if you can't wait, just send me an e-mail and I'll either send bundled attachments or burn a cd and mail it to you.

The only other things I have to add are:
1) because she's brilliant, Sara successfully defended her thesis and will be moving to NY and joining the working world of "real adults" which I think is tremendously cool. Way to go Sara!
and 2) just in case I didn't say it enough this weekend - Jennings, you are just about the best Plus One a gal could have. Thank you for driving me all over northern West Virginia and being the responsible DD and taking care of me and just being lovely in general.