I'm Back!

Where to begin, where to begin? The wedding ceremony went off without a hitch, she said "I do" on the first try, and I think she even meant it! From there we went to the reception hall, which was beautiful to say the least. I don't think we could have done much better as far as halls are concerned. The food was delicious, the staff there were all very courteous, and the host was a huge help in putting together the best party I've ever attended, let alone thrown.

It will be impossible for me to do it much justice in words, but just imagine about 230 Irish & Polish Catholics at an open bar affair, and you should get a decent idea of how festive the reception was. A couple of distinct highlights worth mentioning were the traditional Polish wedding dance, and the tossing of the garter/bouquet.

The Polish wedding dance was new to me, but the general idea is that all the men at the reception throw some money into a basket for the privilige of dancing with my new bride (pretty good concept eh?), then after she's danced with all of them, they form a circle around her and I have to break through to "rescue" her. Now from what I understand, the breaking through is supposed to be largely symbolic and should have been a relatively easy task, but no one explained that to my friends & cousins... I've literally lost fist fights & come out of them with less lumps than my friends & family gave me lol. But it was worth the ass kicking, as we collected a nice chunck of change in the basket :) I was expecting mostly 1's & got mostly 20's, but I have to give most of the credit to my beautiful bride for commanding such a high price :) Oh and for the record it took me 4 attempts to break through with the final one involving me knocking my cousin straight into Erin & sending both of them to the floor (she was fine). Then I threw her over my shoulder caveman style & stomped out in my moment of triumph.

The next part most worth mentioning was Erin & I throwing the bouquet & garter. The girl who caught the flowers happened to be wearing a pantsuit, and my the guy who caught the garter was one of my groomsmen, and we were all in kilts. So as she's sitting down she says "Wait a minute, I'm wearing pants & you're in a skirt?! How are we going to do this?" So they promptly switched positions and for what may have been the first time in the history of weddings, the girl put the garter on the guy. Needless to say the crowd loved it & everyone was hysterical laughing, especially with my cousin hamming it up & fanning himself with the flowers & acting like he was about to faint as the girl put the garter on him (probably didn't go as high as he was hoping for but oh well).

While those two things probably stick out most in my mind, the entire party was just a blast. So many friends & family members there, my only complaint was not being able to hang out with people for more than about 30 seconds at a time, but I guess that's normal at a wedding.

I haven't gotten around to picking up the actual pictures yet, but when I do I will surely post some of the good ones here. In the meantime, if you are interested, you can browse through the lot of them HERE. Be forewarned there are a ton & some do get repetetive, but there are definitely a bunch of good ones worth seeing.

Finally, after the reception, Erin & I spent 10 amazing days in Mexico in the Riviera Maya area. I've never done an all-inclusive trip before, but damn was it ever worth it! Upon arrival they handed her a fresh rose & gave both of us champagne, and basically continued to bow to our every wish for the duration of our stay. I did not hear the word "no" the entire time I was there, the amenities were all 5 star, service was amazing, and there was all the food & drink you could ever hope to consume and more (7 restaurants & 22 bars). We took a couple tours to check out the Mayan ruins at Tulum along with some horseback riding through a jungle trail & along the beach. It was all almost surreal. I do have some pics of the honeymoon, but not on this comp, so again I will be sure to post the good ones in the very near future.

Anyway, before I turn this into a novel, I'll sign off, but it's great to be back, and I hope this giant smile stays plastered on my face for a long time!
Cheers all!

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