July:

It's all over now!  To tell you the truth that comes as a great comfort.  It was a lot of work for us to put together the perfect wedding.  And even though we didn't accomplish all of our goals, we had a great time and are very happy to be married now.  

The Honeymoon exceeded our expectations.  We were very pleased with the resort and Jamaica truly is PARADISE.  I would highly recommend Jamaica to anyone that can afford it.  Sandals and Beaches resorts with the all-inclusive touch makes a very good way to enjoy the island.

Now we are back home and trying to settle back into our busy lives.  The yard needs lots of work and so does the house.  We will still be busy, but not with that huge deadline hanging over us like the wedding.  

It was very nice of the Hudson's to offer us a follow-up honeymoon the weekend of the 28th of July.  We get to go to a special place over on the coast on their nickel.  We are looking forward to enjoying that weekend as another chance to get away is always nice.  

We still feel like we are honeymooning.  Although now we have additional duties, like cleaning the house and organizing everything that didn't get organized before the wedding.  After seeing the wonderful job the Hudson's did on their new house we are also inspired to do a bit more of our renovations to the old cottage in the ghetto we call home.  

Peter pointed something out to me about 10 minutes before the wedding.  Paraphrasing, he said : Take a few moments throughout today to notice just how many people it takes to make something like this go.  If you don't look for it, you wont see it, but looking for it you will notice how many people will take initiative to help out on an event like this to keep things going smoothly - Wedding are unique in this group effort too.  

It was very true.  Tamara and I took every step we could to insure that our guests could just enjoy themselves.  But the intangibles are always out there.  The things you just can't predict like spilling wine all over yourself, or the bum at the park that wants to walk straight through your wedding, or the tree limb that falls out of the tree on your wedding site the morning of the wedding, or how much room 150 chairs really takes up, or someone who takes your camera before the ceremony and says don't worry about it, I'll keep it all day and get lots of good pictures for you, or the guy that develops all of your film overnight so you can share pictures with your family the next day... there are plenty more.

No matter how much we though we could plan and put effort out to create an environment for our guests, there were hundreds of little things that our guests ended up picking up the slack on and never even telling us about.  We were having enough trouble with the things we could keep track of, like the wedding cake order being lost, the reception site messing up on every instruction we gave them, the air conditioning being broke at the reception and the room being too hot to dance in, the Ice Cream melting, the head table never being served wine.

We also noticed the beautiful things like : the special feeling of the outdoor ceremony and how wonderful that was, the excellent tribute offered by Peter who toasted Tom, then Tamara, then Tom and Tamara together, the cake cutting with the sword, our first dance, Tamara's dress and too many others to mention.

Although at the reception I was very tense about the screw ups of the reception site, and their continuing mistakes, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and looking back at the pictures it appears everyone else did.

On our wedding night, following the reception, Tamara and I went home and changed our cloths first.  We talked about getting a room over by Old Sac, or maybe driving up into the foothills or Folsom.  But now that everything was over we realized we hadn't spent any quality time that we could enjoy with our "out-of-town" guests.  Once we were both honest about what we wanted to do, we realized we should just go get a room over by the hotel everyone else was staying at and head up to the hospitality suite for some relaxed quality time with our guests. It was the most fun we had all weekend, and while we should have been off enjoying our wedding night, it made us very happy to be with our friends and family for those few hours.

- Thomas