We Survived Getting Married in the Backyard

It really happened. We got married. And things actually worked very smoothly.

It took a lot of planning and key help from 2 friends Mark and Jan who agreed to be the wedding coordinators for the day and my sister who did the photography. And a lot of luck was involved. The weather was perfect, the only leaf blower on was way down the street (I had talked to my next door neighbors about the timing), the train that brought Terri's family over from Elk Grove was basically on time.

One unexpected thing that happened was that a cat snuck into the house because we had the back door open. Half way through the ceremony, Yoshi, the more nervous of my dogs, was in his crate and started barking furiously. Jan went in and he settled down. What I didn't realize was going on was there was some elaborate cat herding going on that involved a lot of closing and opening of doors. Thank you Jan.

We decided to have Trek our other dog be the ring bearer, and the risk was what was she going to do in that strange situation. She has an excellent recall, but I wasn't sure what to expect. She was perfect and brought the rings to us and then of course started to melt into the ground ("I want to stay with Mom") when I handed her back to Mark, but he picked her up and she was fine (she earned lots of treats for her trouble.)

After the ceremony, we then went to close by Ching Hua restaurant where we had preordered a whole bunch of appetizers and they could order whatever drink they wanted (sans coffee), which folks really liked since they didn't have to think about what to order and since they were appetizers if they didn't like one they could just wait for the next one.

Then we went back to the house for cake (a yummy dolled up chocolate mousse cake from local baker Boniere Bakery) and drinks.

It all worked and I didn't excessively cry during the ceremony and Terri and I were able to hold it together (Mike's advice of when in doubt slow down, really worked) and read our vows to each other outloud (and people loved the vows which was very touching to hear) and then repeat the traditional lines back that Mike (who was marrying us) said. I sometimes had to force myself to focus as I was marveling so much that it was all really happening.

Now to see what happens in the November election. With any luck we'll still be married, and will be planning some very large parties (since the ceremony was small). Oh and the cool thing about having the ceremony small was that you could treat them all very, very well.