Corner of Bourbon & Division

The wedding was wonderful. I didn't mess up my reading, the ceremony was lovely, and I danced up a storm (although disappointingly few people joined me). sorceror and I tore up the dance floor for a while, which was great fun, even when my shoe didn't stand up to the test and I actually fell on my kiester on the floor. :D

Also, I looked really hot in my new dress.


I had a great time. I hope the bride and groom enjoyed themselves even more than I did. :)

I never did get around to updating about the wedding.

Saturday turned out to be pissing rain, despite everyone's best efforts and intentions. Good thing rain is meant to be lucky for a wedding day, otherwise people would have been very frustrated indeed.

I woke up a bit late, and received a phone call about two and a half seconds later from joane who was in town with shenlo for the wedding, asking for the precise time and location of said event. Having caught up for a few minutes with her, I then jumped hastily in the shower and proceeded to gussy myself up for the day. I had decided earlier that there would be too little time for me to change after helping out with the preparations, and it turned out I was right.

I arrived at the Paradoxe around 1pm, having scurried around making last-minute preparations of my own (wedding gift stuff: while I had my gift prepared, it wasn't wrapped or anything), and met up with ai731 and baronscartop who were outside staring intently at the intermittent drizzle and trying to determine whether or not to hold the ceremony outdoors. I got introduced to baronscartop's father, who on first meeting at least is a very nice and fun man. Having met him, I suddenly understand t! a bit better.

We made our way back into the Paradoxe, where gmarc was already setting up the drum kit, along with some assistance from the Paradoxe employees who were setting up all the sound-related equipment. Jan, t! and I started putting up tables and spreading tablecloths and setting up chairs, and were joined by any number of volunteers over the course of the next hour. I know a number of them are on LJ, but unfortunately I don't know their usernames. You know who you are. :)

We spent a very long time blowing up balloons (lots and lots of balloons) and putting up streamers and otherwise making sure the place looked festive. I started out directing everyone's efforts until Jan's friend Sima made an appearance and took over while I ran to the florist's to pick up the bridal bouquet and all the boutonnières for the wedding party et al. The florist was as cranky as ever (good to know some things don't change), and by then it was pissing rain, so I got my coat fairly drenched as I negotiated the flowers into the car, but luckily the rest of me stayed dry, so there was little harm done. The rest of the flowers went directly to the Paradoxe, where I understand there were a few moments of consternation, as people had been under the impression that I would be handling *all* of the flower stuff (which wasn't the case).

I zipped back to Jan and t!'s place to hand off the flowers, and ended up taking the boutonnières with me, as a minor glitch in logistics revealed that we hadn't figured out how to get all these flowers to their respective wearers. The result of that was some anxious hovering around on my part for about an hour until everyone was wearing their flowers. I probably needn't have worried so much about it, since everything turned out fine, but there you go.

After a bit of last-minute primping, I returned to the Paradoxe to find it completely and beautifully decorated, whereas when I had left it looked as though a party supply store had exploded in the middle of the room. It was very gratifying to see everyone's hard work all coming together like that.

The caterers had arrived just before I had left to fetch the flowers, and were busily setting up whatever it was they needed to set up, pausing every now and then to ask me where something should go, or who was taking care of what. I expect I should point out that the caterers were there as a result of my recommendation, since they cater for my dance club. The bartender and waitress were also from my dance club, so basically all the hired help were friends of mine. :) This is just to explain to those readers unfamiliar with the situation why I seem to have ended up being the go-to person for them all: they knew me, so it was easier to approach me than anyone else. Okay, on with the story.

The guests all arrived in one giant wave after that, just before 4pm when the ceremony was scheduled to start. After a bit of milling around, those of us who were already in place encouraged people to find their seats, or at least to mingle and socialize and not block the entryway. There were any number of people there that I hadn't seen for ages, not the least of which were joane and shenlo, and luvenditti managed to scrape together train fare to drop in from Toronto, which was really awesome. She had been quite put out at having to miss the wedding, so it was great that she was able to make it.

On a random note, there was a "It's A Small World After All" moment, when I thought I recognised one of the guests. It turned out I was right, too: he was one of the truck drivers I worked with at Erb Transport. Turns out he and his wife know t! from the pagan community, and have known him for a very long time. So we got caught up on everything that's been happening at Erb since I left, and had a very good time of it all around.

The day was not blessed in terms of logistics. Apart from the rain, which caused traffic to slow down, there was a massive car accident on the autoroute right at the exit most of the guests and the bride and groom would be taking in order to get to the Paradoxe. As a result, the ceremony started about half an hour or forty minutes late.

Late or not, the ceremony itself was lovely. I was sitting next to talyesin, and by the time the vows were over we both had tears streaming down our faces. The celebrants weren't exactly dry-eyed, either, may I hasten to point out. Luckily, the bride and groom have a sense of humour as well, and so after the vows came MUPPETS! Yes, there were muppets, conceived of and sewed together by the bride herself, who became known to all of us as Death and Taxes. Death and Taxes read out the Quebec Civil Code, which is a necessary evil for all civil ceremonies. As joane later put it, I don't think the Quebec Civil Code has ever been more entertaining. There were three readings performed by non-LJ-enabled folks, ring exchanged ("You may kiss the groom…"), and suddenly my friends were officially married. Like I said: a lovely, lovely ceremony on all counts.

I had to run out to get ice right after I got through the reception line. Paul, one of the caterers, came to me somewhat anxiously and informed me that no one had got any ice, so I jumped in my car and went to the local Maxi supermarket to obtain some, and thus another crisis was averted. ;) I came back just in time to snag the last flute of champagne, and schmoozed happily with my friends. There were some excellent little canapés, too, involving pear slices and tuna, which I never would have thought of combining, but which were delicious. I missed the other canapés, unfortunately, due to being gone for ice, but the loss wasn't huge. The pear and tuna things were, as I said, delicious.

The only really sad part of the day was poor sandman7, who woke up feeling really ill and dragged himself to the wedding anyway. He managed to stay for the ceremony, but by the time we were almost ready for dinner he could barely stand up straight and had to go home. Frankly, we all thought it was pretty damned heroic of him to have made it that far, but he was obviously very upset about not being able to stay the whole time, especially as both Invisible and Random Colour were supposed to play after dinner. Still, it was obvious that he was really too sick to stay, and so he got driven home. Last news I had, he was feeling better, so it's good all around. :)

Dinner was fantastic. There was poached salmon and some marvellous confection involving chicken, and the best spinach salad I've ever had (I don't usually like spinach salad, but I had seconds of this), along with rice and green beans and pasta salad. One of the best meals I've had in a while, let me tell you. Dessert came in two parts: one was a lovely fluffy fruit-flavoured mousse-type thing (which disappeared with alacrity), and of course the other was the wedding cake itself. The wedding cake was instant death, it was so good. So, so good. I've always been a fan of wedding cake. :)

Very quickly after dinner, once the (surprisingly short) speeches and thank yous were done, the bands began to set up for their gigs. Invisible was of course short a member, but they soldiered on nonetheless, having dedicated the show to sandman7, and put on a very good performance. There were some songs in which there was a gaping sandman7-shaped hole, but they pulled it off admirably nonetheless, and we cheered ourselves hoarse. I adore watching Invisible on stage: they just have so much fun with their set that it's impossible not to be incredibly enthusiastic while they're playing.

Random Colour's set went very, very well. I can in all honestly claim that that was probably our best gig ever. We paid attention to our pacing (at least, I did), and that helped considerably, and the main difference was of course that everyone on stage was enjoying themselves and not worrying about making mistakes. People got up and danced to our set, which was fantastic. We've never had people dance before. We rocked out, and it was good.

The evening segued into dancing, and there was a LOT of dancing. Much dancing. gmarc and I negotiated our way through a couple of swing dances, much to our amusement and everyone else's, as he tends to do social dance and I of course am of the country dance persuasion, and so we got our wires crossed more than once. We still had a lot of fun, especially when we each got the hang of what the other was doing. He taught me a rock'n'roll step, and a good time was had by all. All sorts of fun. Then there was more dancing. Did I mention there was dancing?

It got incredibly warm in the Paradoxe, so I also spent a fair bit of time outside with the smokers and others who just wanted to escape the heat. Chatted with countless numbers of people, and got to know t!'s parents a little better, as well as his aunt and his cousin.

By the time midnight rolled around, most of the guests had gone home, and it was only the old guard left, so to speak: the small core group of friends that make up the vast majority of our parties. We danced some more and laughed and chatted and caught up and had a grand old time, until the bride and groom made off to their hotel room to begin their honeymoon.

All that was left to do after that was the cleanup. I'd been told that someone was supposed to take care of it, but when 1am rolled around and it was only us there, I figured that whoever it was who was in charge of cleanup had gotten their signals mixed up and wasn't going to do it. There were enough of us there that it only took about an hour to break down the set, to remove all the decorations, sweep the floors, put away the tables and chairs and empty all the bottles and glasses into the sink. We cleared out the empties, put the gifts and leftover booze in my car, and by 2am the place looked as though nothing had happened. I'm given to understand that we may have left some cables and two chairs from our practice space behind, which I will be trying to retrieve sometime this week, but otherwise I don't think anyone could tell that there was a wedding in that room.

I let gmarc and talyesin manage the efforts to take away the instruments from the gig, and took home the presents and the booze, which I carted in to Jan and t!'s place, much to Grimshackle's dismay. It took me about 45 minutes to unload everything, and only later did I discover that someone (I'm pretty sure it was Grimshackle) had puked on the dining-room table without my noticing. So I got that cleaned up (since that was the table on which I had put all the wedding presents), scolded both cats for being pukey little monsters (they ignored me), and went upstairs to my own apartment for a well-deserved bath.

Posted a quickie entry about the wedding around 4am, and collapsed into a coma until 10am, when I had to get up again to go help gmarc and talyesin move all the instruments back to the rehearsal space. I was actually quite surprised: between the three of us we managed to fit everything into two cars, and got the whole shebang moved and set up again in an hour and a half. In other words, we are teh awesome.

Spent the rest of the day with the parental units, who were leaving on Monday for France. As a result, we didn't really celebrate Mother's Day, since we'll be doing that when they return. I did develop a very sore throat, which was most annoying. I assumed it was because of all the screaming and cheering and very loud talking (to be heard above the music) that I did on Saturday, but it has persisted until today, so it must be something else. As fearsclave would say: I am diseased.

So that's that! More details about this wedding than you ever wanted to know.

Everyone's getting married.

Gotta go run and finish getting ready.

Jan and t!: you probably won't read this until a few weeks from now, but I hope today is every bit as special (and more so) as you could want.

Yes, it's just an excuse for a new icon. ;)