coworker: so do you feel any different?
me: nope
coworker: thats what happens when you live in sin first.
me: yeah. you know what to expect.

so, the wedding. The wedding was absolutely mad, and simultaneously the most stressful and most wonderful time of my life. There was so much to do in the last few days going into it that nearly everyone jumped in to help, and it became this big group effort. Diane the magnificent was able to help my mom out, and also to help me with the flowers, and that was utterly awesome. Erin helped with the flowers too, as did Michelle and Chris's sister Liz. Even Steve and Patrick helped out. Tullia, Saint Tullia, was my rock though. I was at my wits end, about to go crazy all over everyone, and she helped with everything and made it possible for me to hold together. If you'd ducked into my house at 2am the morning of the wedding, you'd have seen me, Tullia, Patrick and Steve in the living room with the flowers and some chambord, and the guys (Chris, Jerid, Timmy, and Zach) in the patio room tying up the last of the favors with tulle circles and ribbon. It was utterly ridiculous, but at the same time inspired me with a sense of how awesome our friends are. When we got to the wedding, Tullia and most of the girls were buzzing around busilly finishing up all the last minute details. Michelle, Tully, Erin and my sister were distributing the corsages and boutonniers, while the Gleasons were helping my step mother and her friend finish up the decorations. Patrick's mom, the great Mama Hug, performed our ceremony, and it was perfect. Short, sweet, well -suited for us. She mistakenly combined our names as "Chracy" (pronounced crazy), but it added a bit of levity, and I personally enjoyed it a lot. Mikey read "The Orange" by Wendy Cope, which was a nice touch. My sister, Michelle, Wendy, and I'm told even Steve and Patrick, all cried through the whole ceremony. It was so surreal, to be there finally walking down the aisle. I had been so focused on my mom getting there (she didn't finish Liz's dress until 4:30-half an hour before the wedding was supposed to start, so they didn't get there until 5:15 and we started late. Wendy's dress didn't get finished, but she was a great sport and wore a black and white polka-dot dress and looked cute just the same.) that I hadn't really thought much about my impending big moment. When I started walking down, everyone stood up, and it was just bizarre to have all those eyes on me and I kept having to remind myself that this was really it. After the ceremony, we all walked out to a Blues Brother's song, and went to go take pictures. The pictures took FOREVER, but we have tons and everything I've seen so far is great. Our DJ Bill introduced us into the reception to Peter Gunn, I gave a short speech thanking a couple people, then passed the mic to Michelle, who gave her fabulous pirate speech, just as she'd been planning to do since that night in the airport when Chris and I first met in person. Jerid gave his speech, which was another great one, and then it was time to eat. I didn't actually eat more than a few bites because I was too busy buzzing around welcoming people and thanking them for coming. Our first dance was to "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys, and it's cute because on the video you can see us singing to one another. I also danced with my dad and uncle Gary (who was so excited he looks almost giddy on the video. He play-complained when I told him I wanted him to dance with me, but I think he really was thrilled.) Steevie was the only one to participate both in the bouquet and garter tosses, but sadly didn't catch either. My cousin Alison caught the bouquet, and Jerid shoved all of the guys out of the way to get the garter. We have a great piture of him with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, twirling the garter around his finger. The cake was awesome, and no, we didn't shove it in each other faces because I didn't want to get purple frosting on the beautiful dress my mom made me. We hammed it up for all the pictures though, and I'm sure there are plenty floating around of us using the cake server as a murder weapon. The rest of the night was dancing, and I'm sure I never sat down for more than a minute at a time. Timmy was fabulous at rocking the dance floor, which didn't escape the DJ's notice. He put on "Canned Heat" by Jamiraquai (the same song from the end of Napoleon Dynomite, the dance scene), and it was one spectacular Timmy dance solo. I'm sure there are tons of videos and pics of this, everyone was taking them all around the dance floor. I participated, with Wendy, in several liberal uses of "the sprinkler", and witnessed more than a few uses of "the shopping cart", "the fishing line", and several others. Me and Zack even busted out with "el toro" at one point. All in all it was a fantastic night, and I couldn't have asked for better company. I hope everyone had as much fun as me. My only regret is that I didn't have more time to spend with everyone. It was all so rushed and so fast. I could have used another week with each person, really.

Well, more later, time to get ready for work.