Earl Grey and porridge made from the leftover grains of the IPA I brewed last night. Om nom nom!

People kept asking me if I was excited or nervous. I never really was. I suppose the closest I came to getting nervous was when I realized that it was an hour to go to the ceremony and I had done everyone’s hair but my own. Luckily veils cover it all up when you just kinda toss your hair in a bun and run out the door without lipstick on.

The event was not without its moment of crisis. The ever-lovely Darien was leading the bridesmaids and myself to the yacht, playing “Wild Rover” on her fiddle (an apropos number, I think, for a bride to march in to). She was almost all the way down the gangplank when her ultra-mega-high-heeled shoe snapped in half. Without missing a beat, she shuffled backwards onto the boat where the crew were waiting with a roll of duct tape. They put her shoe back together lickety-split, proof yet again that there is no sticky situation that cannot be fixed with duct tape.

Each of our dads offered some words of wisdom, and both inadvertently picked Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 to read without knowing that the other had also chosen this text. Great minds do indeed think alike.

And then the surprise. My husband-to-be knew that there would be a musical number, but I had left him in the dark as to what it was. The song “Believe Me if All Those Endearing Young Charms” has always been one of my favorites, not only because it’s incredibly sweet but because it’s so damn Irish. Irish people can’t write anything without mentioning death, drink, or imprisonment, and really, what brings all three of those things together quite as well as marriage? So even poet extraordinaire Thomas Moore, crafting lyrics of undying devotion, had to write something that essentially says “even when you’re all wrinkled and ugly I’ll still want you.” I took Mr. T’s hands and started singing. He got this deer in the headlights look, but then those baby blues went all misty. Then I started getting a little verklempt and it suddenly occurred to me that singing may not have been the best idea. But I kept it together, made it through, and moments later we’d firmly clamped a ball and chain on each of us.

The rest of the cruise was lovely and now we’ve got more photos than we know what to do with from our amazingly talented and camera-obsessed friends. We had so much fun that we had to keep the party going. We’d had enough of yachts, so we retired to more informal digs at Triple Rock Brewery in Berkeley and abandoned filet mignon with demi glacé and champagne in favor of more plebeian cuisine like chili cheese fries and pale ale. I also needed to slip into something more comfortable.

photo courtesy philikon

What a lovely start to a lovely life. Marriage never looked so good.