Post wedding high

Better than alcohol anyday. Holy cow! I can't believe it's all over. I can't believe that somehow, we managed to plan a wedding in less than 5 days and, somehow, it was beautiful. The day of the wedding I woke up, told my friend that was visiting that 'of course we will take you to the REI Flagship store so you can shop' even though it was across town and we still needed to get a cake, amongst other things. lol Apparently, someone was smiling on us because, after dropping her off there, we walked into Larry's Market on lower Queen Anne and we went to the bakery looking for a cake and we met Amy. She works there. She looked sort of like I used to in high school - kind of a black makeup, black nail polish, Doc Marten boot wearing sort of girl - so I liked her right away. She wanted to help us out so badly but we hadn't even thought about what we wanted. So the two of us went to the coffee shop and went through some books of pictures that she could project on the cake and then draw. We had all sorts of goofy ideas but came to a good conclusion, which she was able to help us with in under 30 minutes. You'll have to wait for the photos though, because I haven't gotten them loaded to this laptop, which is a work computer!

Anyhow, we managed to get myself, my mother, M's 'best man' (that same friend of the REI store), and my maid of honor to the nail salon where we proceeded to have manicures and pedicures. We were literally flying out of the salon and to the house at less than an hour to go before people arrived and Anne still had to take a shower. Thank god for the fact I have short wash-and-go style hair and my fiance (now husband! eep!!!) is used to seeing me without makeup. Anything would be 'dressing up'! I got ready in less than said hour, we had champagne flutes out and champagne poured as the guests were arriving. In total, there were 12 of us.

We had a nice toast on our deck with the sun setting in the background. Photos were taken and that sort of thing. Then we climbed into the limo (woo hoo!) and headed to the courthouse. There was more champagne in the overcrowded limo (that's the way it should be!) and we made it to the courthouse with 15 minutes to spare. We got to the designated courtroom but it was locked! lol The 'best man' ran off in search of some answers but after about 5 minutes the door opened and Judge K stepped out. She called M and I into her office, chatted with us briefly about where we met, her own trip to Peru, how she got to doing what she's doing (in between trying criminal cases) and how much she loves this part of her job. We could hear laughter in the courtroom - our friends and family - we found out later there was banging of the gavel and some attempt at singing in the microphone at the front of the room. lol The judge gave a really beautiful speech - including an excerpt from an Anne Morrow Lindbergh book - I'll write bits of it later when I think about it. I wish I could remember more but it all went in one ear and out the other. It had to do with being best friends and blah de blah de blah. Take my word for it, it was beyond anything we could have imagined. She even blew bubbles at us when she was finished!

After the ceremony, we hopped back in the limo and back to our neighborhood. We had found a lovely, intimate local Italian restaurant for dinner. It was a tiny place. We started in the bar which was barely big enough for the 12 of us but couldn't have been more perfect! We moved into the restaurant and had a small upper level to ourselves. There was a bottle of champagne waiting for us... M's sister had called.the.restaurant.to.order.it. (It was 3am Dublin time) and she even called back to congratulate us. It was pretty darn cool. The food was great, the cake turned out wonderful, the party ended about 9:30 - limo taking everyone back to our house, then taking us to the W Hotel in downtown. Pretty swanky. It was so lovely to hang out in bed and watch tv this morning and not have to do a thing. We stayed for the late checkout, then took our friend C out for lunch to thank her for loaning us everything but the kitchen sink during this holiday. It was great fun! I'm exhausted and heading to bed. I just wanted to let everyone know I'm Mrs. C now.

(ok, I'm not really changing my name but that's what I'm calling myself!)