Genevieve’s christening, a photo essay
19 Sunday May 2013
Posted Genevieve, High Flight, This is the day
in19 Sunday May 2013
Posted Genevieve, High Flight, This is the day
in22 Monday Mar 2010
Posted Exposition, High Flight, Our Wedding, This is the day
inAnd I remember talking to the Hagler Bailly coterie of the Prices, Symondses, and Andrew Fried who were anxious to get to the after party. I slipped them my hotel key and told them to go on ahead and not to hurt themselves when their jaws hit the ground upon seeing our magnificent suite.
We swirled together and apart carried by the glittering waves of the party. I was speaking to the Bartolettis when I heard someone shouting, “ANDREW, your WIFE wants you!!!!”
I disengaged without even a goodbye and hurried off to find her yelling, “WHERE’S MY HUSBAND!!?” in the Gallery. The last dance was starting.
It wasn’t Dance me to the End of Love as we’d planned. It was Peer Gabriel’s in Your Eyes. We’d planned with Miles the DJ a medly of the first dance songs of as many of our guests as we could determine in advance. A number of them, including Brody & Kristin, had used In Your eyes as their first dance, and it’s a good enough song that it served quite well, and I didn’t mind. We’d planned a LOT and ended up packing almost all of it into the reception.
Everyone streamed out onto the dance floor for the final dance. Our reception didn’t involve a ton of dancing, which was fine with us, but it was great to see everyone here for this.
Julie and I danced the final dance joyfully. When the last strains rang through the air, we were exhausted and immeasurably happy.
Some couples leave the reception in a car decorated with tin cans and lipstick. Julie’s Maid of Honor Elianna had gone so far as to schedule the car decoration in her meticulously coordinated wedding program. But we’d arrived in a loaned Rolls Royce Phantom that 1) had departed already and 2) wouldn’t be decorated except over the dead body of Julie’s Uncle Paul who had procured it and driven it for us.
Instead of walking out to bubbles or rice or anything else, we’d planned to leave in a candlelit processional across the ellipse. I’d even mapped out the route in the materials sent to the guests. We gathered up a number of the copper lanterns from the centerpieces, and set out with about 20 people following us.
The weather was obligingly warm and unrainy. We joyfully proceeded across the ellipse singing some song I can’t remember. It may have been “You’re a grand old flag,” it may have been “I’m ‘Enery the Eighth I am I am.” When we reached our hotel we proceeded through the lobby, being careful not to be too boisterous.
It was Julie’s first view of the suite, and her jaw dropped.
Everyone was giddy with happiness, exhaustion and just the perfect amount of inebriation. The HBIX crew was already there in the suite waiting for us. We’d arranged for my brother to collect the opened booze from the reception and bring it over, but he hadn’t arrived yet and they’d ordered a bunch of beer, snacks, and inexplicably, coffee. They told me it was on its way up from room service.
More and more people gathered. We’d told everyone what room number we were in at the reception, and many of the guests were staying in the same hotel, so we had quite a nice after party. The guests ran delightedly up and down the stairs, out onto the HUGE balcony to look out at the Washington Monument and the ellipse.
We popped the bottle of champagne that had been so generously provided by Julie’s cousin Sara Warren who worked at the Marriot.
My brother showed up, asking if it was true that we knew the head of Rolls Royce North America. “Oh yeah, Julie’s Uncle,” I said. “Wanna meet him? He’s right over there!”
Barbara and Chuck showed up, which made me very very happy. Though when I dropped trou to flaunt the amazing light up disco boxers for those who had not been at NPD, she was slightly taken aback.
Finally, well after 1 in the morning, things began to wind down. The cart from room service finally showed up, well after Fried and the rest of the HBIX crew had tottered off. I signed for it, wondering what exactly we’d needed coffee for, but not really caring.
As Barbara took her leave, I gave her a big hug. “We did it!” I said. “We pulled off the perfect wedding!!!”
Finally, the last guest slipped away, leaving me and my gorgeous bride alone in the amazing suite where I’d awakened that morning as a single man.
We held each other in dizzy disbelief at how wonderful our wedding day had been. Somehow it had not only lived up to but even exceeded the hype.
Julie and I have never said, “I love you” to each other. We’d talked about how it was a rote phrase that people said so often that it was deprived of meaning. She’d said it to her ex husband, and that had turned out to be meaningless in the end. And people say it about things like cake, and falafel, and the color periwinkle. We instead say, “Come ti voglio bene,” or “Ti voglio tanto bene,” which is an untranslatable Italian phrase that means, “Oh, how well you please me!”
But this night as we held each other her eyes glistened with tears of happiness and she said, “I love you! It’s just that simple. You’ve reclaimed even that.”
And now dear readers I will draw the curtain down as we divest ourselves of our finery and bring to a close the first of many many perfect days as husband and wife.
18 Thursday Mar 2010
Posted Exposition, High Flight, Our Wedding, This is the day
in(When we last left our fearless hero, he’d just gotten back from giving a tour of the cathedral for his wedding guests…)
I shaved, very deliberately. I normally shift into an almost automatic mode shaving, thinking about other stuff. What’s to be done that day, etc. This time I paid careful attention to every stroke. I had been shaving only in one direction for the last week so as not to irritate my skin. I remembered my brother’s wedding when I’d forgotten my razor, been forced to borrow a one blade disposable from the front desk, and looked like I’d shaved with a piece of rusty glass. I used a new Mach 3 and shaved very deliberately. ‘This has to be the best shave of your life,’ I was thinking.
I nicked myself only once, and with a bit of TP it cleared up.
I struggled into my Action Undershirt. I tried on the disco ball light up boxers that Adam and Amy had given me the night before at the Rehearsal Dinner. I figured they wouldn’t fit under the suit pants, but it actually worked fine. On went the sock garters. On went the custom shirt, the amazing bespoke suit, the fantastic tie. In went the contacts. I was aware of every move as I got dressed. I was slightly surreal. I was aware that at 206 the bridal snacks had arrived and everyone was having fun getting ready. I almost regretted not having had my groomsmen assemble somewhere to go over together. But many of them have kids. We don’t have a vehicle large enough to transport everyone. It would have been too much trouble.
I actually don’t remember rolling through the lobby of the JW in my wedding suit, but I remember looking at the fall foliage driving up to the Cathedral. It was gorgeous, even under the slate gray sky. I remember thinking that everything seemed more vivid, that little details seemed clearer and sharper.
I parked on South Road, not as close as I’d been before, and walked into the Cathedral. The first person I saw was Bill Holland, the photographer. He said, “Anne’s with your bride and she’s not here yet, so you’re good.” I rolled into the slype. Julie’s Nana and mom were there. Other people were milling around. I saw Stanley Utterback the verger, and asked him if he’d gotten the marriage license I’d left, since it wasn’t there now. “Oh yeah,” he said, “I found that first thing and was wondering who their guardian angel was.” I’m my OWN guardian angel. I also asked him if he’d seen the camera and he said, “Oh, that’s YOURS!” Relief flooded through me and I instantly called my dad to let him know it’d been found.
More and more people were milling around the slype. There was a sense of anticipation and energy. I was almost giddy with anticipation. One of the bridesmaids had brought the snacks from 206 to the slype and I fell on the brownies and other goodies. Sara informed me that there were at least twice as many trays back at 206.
Bill Holland came up and told me that Julie was en route, and that I needed to make myself scarce from the slype so she could come in and get dressed without seeing me. He asked where I’d be. I hummed and hemmed and said, “Uh, Children’s Chapel. I guess.” Of course I was texted for something or called away to handle something else, and walked towards the Narthex when I saw an extraordinarily pregnant Fay coming down the aisle. I greeted her and tore onward. I was trying to get the details of how Annie would get up to the Triforium. I recruited one of my fellow docents (Carol Dwyer) to take her up and down afterwards.
Guests were beginning to arrive and were milling around. Bill grabbed me, and told me to head out to the north porch to wait for Julie.
He and I were out there, handing out. I felt good, relaxed, eager. This feels faster writing it down than it did at the time. I felt like I was milking everything out of every moment.
I asked Brad how he handled his ‘first sight.’ He told me that he of course used humor as a defense mechanism, to the point that Bill Holland told him to “stop mugging for the camera.”
I remember asking if I was going to get my buttonaire before the First Sight pictures. I’d heard someone say they had arrived. Bill said not to worry about it, they’d take care of it.
Then it was time for Julie to come out. I stood on the lower steps with my back to her. She came around, and we could hear each other talking before we saw each other. We chuckled and cracked jokes and said, “Now? Is it time yet?” I said, “I feel oddly like Orpheus.” Julie said, “Better that than Lot’s Wife.” I remember thinking that we were so witty and literary. Then Bill and Anne told us to turn around.
It was stunning. A revelation. She was magnificent. I don’t know what I’d expected, but not this. Julie is always amazingly, gobsmackingly beautiful. I’ll catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye as she sleeps, or makes dinner, or something else, and be amazed at how incredible she looks. But this was something else. She was transcendently radiant, amazing and perfect. Her hair was up and her makeup emphasized her luminously gorgeous eyes. The diamond necklace around her neck sparkled.
We were both stunned and overwhelmed. We were choked up, tearing up, not quite sobbing, but completely and totally into each other. I heard the clicking of cameras as if from a great distance.
At some point, we finally fled the rain and went back inside, but this is a complete blur to me. All I remember is how into Julie I was, and how I felt like we were both wrapped in a cloak of invincibility and awesomeness. Everything was right and nothing could go wrong.
Inside, we were handling the last few details. I was bustling around trying to make sure that all the mothers got their correct abanico. Julie told me that she’d given them to Amy Rothman to hand out. Rothman, who didn’t know a Helen from a Judy, had given them to the appropriate groomsmen. I retrieved them and handed them to the correct people. Or rather people who would hand them to the correct people. I gave Elizabeth a hurried, impromptu lesson on the camera. Someone assured me that the fans were in the hands of the correct people.
I was in the slype when someone said, “Your photographer needs to talk to you.” I headed out and found Annie with Carol Dwyer, the docent who was going to take her up to the triforium. We figured out that she’d thought the triforium meant the orchestra walk over the choir stalls, and quickly Bill and I decided to scrap the idea of Anne taking processional pictures from the Triforium, so she didn’t have to scurry down and scurry back up the stairs to the top of the stalls.
Things were accelerating. I looked over and saw Mel and Greg looking unsure as to whether they were allowed to cross the platform to the choir. I caught their eye and gestured wildly that they should just walk on up.
I looked up and saw a groomsman escorting a grandmother up the platform and into the choir. Someone said, “Shouldn’t you be up at the mid nave?” Oh crap, I said, you’re right! I realized that the Mussorgsky had started playing. I ran up and took my place. The groomsmen had already processed. Steve and the verger with the incense were waiting as was Brad. I exchanged a few chuckles, shook Steve’s hand, and looked around. Stanly Utterback was sending people down the aisle evenly spaced. I looked at Brad and said, “OK, time to get married!” I jumped up and down a couple times, and did the neck stretches left and right. Stanley watched amused as he sent the incense verger and Steve down the aisle.”Go” Then Brad. “Go” I said to Stanley, “Maybe I should just sashay down the aisle,” and did my best Ministry of Silly Walks slide. Stanley lost it. He started laughing and said, “Just go,” shaking his head with laughter and gestured with his verge.
And I went.
I looked around, trying to take in every detail through my pores. I was determined not to let this moment fly by in a blur as so many had warned us it would. I was peripherally aware of the tourists in sweatshirts lounging in the chairs of the nave around us, but it didn’t bother me in the slightest. This was MY cathedral. We filled this space and made it our own. It was our home.
I was walking down the nave and realized that I was so eager that I was hurrying, and had gained on Brad. I thought to myself, slow down, don’t rush this, this might be the greatest moment of your life. I slowed a bit. The Mussorgsky was PERFECT! It was so awesome on the organ. It was echoing through the space and filling it with an awesome sound. The smoke from the incense was in my nose. My skin was almost tingling I was so electrically excited.
I stepped up onto the platform and Erik Suter hit the stirring crescendo of the Mussorgsky promenade. GODDAMN, I thought, this was perfect. I was concentrating so much on keeping my good posture that I realized halfway down the choir that I didn’t need to keep a grave expression. I allowed myself to break out in the huge beaming smile that I felt. The faces of everyone who had come there for us, for me and Julie, were just a blur. I couldn’t pick anyone out. My groomsmen were there at the communion rail, lined up, and Steve was waiting for us. I stepped forward, did the half turn. Brad reached over and shook my hand.
I was now looking back down the whole length of the Cathedral, watching the haze from the incense rise in front of the Rose Window.
Just as I turned, the first of the bridesmaids stepped into the choir. Erik Suter shifted from the Mussorgsky to the Aaron Copeland. Now, I’d been a bit…not nervous, quite, but we’d HEARD the Mussorgsky on the organ. We knew it was going to work if not how awesome it would be on the huge organ in the cathedral. But we hadn’t heard the Copeland. No one had. It’d never been PLAYED on the organ before. Suter had to arrange it himself. So there was a possibility it wouldn’t quite work, at least in my paranoid mind.
But BOY did it ever work. Oh. MY. GODDD!!!!
The first strains started and I had that swelling in my heart I get when Roy Hobbs hits a home run at the end of The Natural. And it just grew. And grew. The bridesmaids came down the aisle. All were gorgeous. All carried themselves with confidence, striding through the space resolutely, knowing that they OWNED it. The abanicos looked AWESOME in front of the dresses. I found myself wondering why everyone doesn’t use abanicos instead of bouquets.
The music was swelling, and it was so awesome I had to clench my jaw to keep from losing it. I watched as the bridesmaids came up to the front. I remember watching Trish come right up in front of Steve, whom she of course knew, and walk the little circle curve to her spot that we’d been shown in the rehearsal.
And then Julie appeared. And the music swelled. It rose and grew to a crescendo. She stepped up into the choir and everyone rose to their feet.
And I gave up trying to maintain my composure. The waterworks started in earnest. The Copeland was AMAZING. It was delicate, yet powerful. This was the first time it had been played on the organ and it was spectacular.
When she got halfway down the aisle of the choir, she too abandoned the efforts to maintain a serene and aloof visage and threw her head back and grinned from ear to ear, almost guffawing she was so happy.
She came up to the top of the communion rail, and I took her hand, and we turned to face the vicar. My heart was so full I felt like bursting. I was overwhelmed with pride, with amazement, and most of all with love for this woman. I felt like I was flying. I was giddy.
Vicar Steve began the service. When he said, “If anyone knows any reason, speak now or forever hold your peace,” Julie comically craned her neck around to see if anyone was going to say anything.
17 Wednesday Mar 2010
Posted Exposition, High Flight, Our Wedding, This is the day
inEveryone says that the wedding flies by so fast that you need the pictures to remember what happened. Julie and I tried to be as deliberate as possible and soak up as many of the details as we could so that we would remember them. I picked one moment and said, I’m going to remember every single particle of perception about this instant and capture it in amber to encapsulate the whole event. That moment came just as I had processed up to the communion rail and had turned to face the choir, watching the bridesmaids process behind me. As I did so, I saw the smoke from the incense censor wafting upwards and filling the enormous space of the choir, the crossing behind that, and even up into the Nave. Through it I saw the glorious colors of the western Creation Rose window, which had been on the cover of our invitations, blazing even on a rainy day. It lit up the incense and made the air seem almost thick. It was amazing. I thought to myself, “Now THERE’S something that I’ve never seen at the Cathedral.”
I had spent the night in our fabulous suite at the JW Marriot, arranged by Julie’s cousin. This was the vice presidential suite…big enough to accommodate an entire rock band and groupies. It had two floors and let out onto an enormous balcony with views of the Washington Monument, the Ellipse, and DAR. I had rattled around there the night before all by my lonesome.
I had the wedding dress, my suit, and Julie’s overnight bags with me. I woke up way before my alarm, of course, and lay there thinking, “This is my wedding day.” I was nervous, not about the sacrament or the huge step I was about to take. I was enthusiastic and could not have been more sure that what I was doing was not only right, but the best thing I would ever do. No, I was just spinning with all the logistics and arrangements that had to go right that day. I was hoping for good weather, in defiance of the forecast. I was nervous about the tour of the Cathedral I was going to give that morning. I was hoping that the video camera, which I had left in the choir during the rehearsal the night before, had been snagged by our verger or by someone else at the Cathedral. But the head spins that had hit a fever pitch around midday on Thursday had subsided by now. At this point Julie and I were both relaxing our anxieties somewhat and letting things play out as they would. We knew we had done absolutely everything we could to make things work out, and that it wouldn’t be PERFECT, but that it no matter what happened it would be perfect for us.
The night before I had neglected to bring the wedding license along to the rehearsal, and had been given a bit of a scolding by Stanely Utterback, our wonderful verger. I had intended to pick it up with the wedding dress the night before, but had missed it with all the other stuff I’d had to transport.
I got out of bed and cracked the curtains. It was overcast, as expected, but not raining, which was good. All week we’d been frantically checking the forecasts, hoping for a miraculously sunny day, but the predictions had all been dire. Thunderstorms. One even said, “Tornados.” We’d consoled ourselves with the fact that it was warm, unlike the wedding we’d attended the week before in the same space when the weather had been rainy and bone chillingly cold.
I resolved to do everything on this day as deliberately and intentionally as possible. I didn’t want to find myself on autopilot at any point, rushing through things. As I showered I thought to myself, “This is the last shower you’ll take as a single man.” I got into my docent’s uniform of blue blazer and tan slacks and called down to have the valet bring the car around. I peeked out the window and even saw a ray of sunshine and a patch of blue sky. “No way,” I thought, “Don’t even get your hopes up.”
I headed down to the lobby, stopping for a soda in the gift shop. I congratulated myself on how together and relaxed I was for such a momentous day, which had been the subject of so much effort and planning over the last year. “Keys, check.. OK, I have to swing by 206 to pick up the license, and then get up to the cathedral. People are coming for the tour at 10. It’s barely 9 now, but I’ll bet I can sneak in through the Way of Peace.” I strode through the lobby confident and relaxed. I got into the car thinking, “OK, I’ve got this fucker under control, because I’m THE MAN, I’m totally THE MACK, I COMPLETELY LEFT THE WEDDING DRESS UPSTAIRS OH CRAP!!!!”
Hurriedly I snapped off the ignition, leaving the car idling in the driveway of the hotel, probably blocking traffic. I tore upstairs, grabbed the dress, and boomed downstairs like a bat out of hell.
OK, that was a good little reality check about getting too big for ones britches.
I drove up to 206. I knew that Julie and her bridesmaids would be at Aveda getting their makeup done. Sure enough, only James was holding down the fort at 206. He was a bit surprised to see me when I came crashing through the door like Kramer to snag the wedding license. I told him I was heading up to give the tour of the Cathedral, and he seemed wistful. James is an architect, and would probably get a kick out of the tour. But his wife Elianna, the maid of honor, had instructed him to wait there in case he was needed to run around and do anything, and he was staying put.
I headed up to the cathedral, and parked right by the way of peace on south road. Some tourists were knocking about, and I blew right by them carrying the dress, feeling very much like the insider I was.
Sure enough, the Way of Peace was open and I slipped in, carrying the huge white bag with the wedding dress over my shoulder, the license under one arm.
I left both in the slype, the dress hanging right next to the bishop’s robe, and the license on the register we’d signed the day before. Then, still half an hour before I was supposed to meet my guests for the tour, or the cathedral was supposed to open, I walked around the old girl. I lit a candle and did something I don’t normally do…I prayed. I said, “God, you and I don’t talk much. I’m not sold on the idea you even exist. But today I humbly beseech you. Of course, THY will be done NOT mine, but if it be your will, first of all, happiness and long life for me and Julie. Second, may things go as planned and not screw up. And third, recognizing that I’m totally in extra credit territory here, if you could POSSIBLY see a way to swing nice weather, we’d REALLY appreciate it.”
After that I ran into a fellow congregant who was there to polish the silver. I took him back behind the door in St. Mary’s Chapel, and sure enough, that’s where they were. I made a mental note to tell Julie that this was something we should do.
As I did so, I was suddenly quite lonely and missing her. I realized that this was perhaps the longest time we’d gone without talking or texting with each other. I’d gotten one text from her earlier saying, “off to Aveda!” and I’d responded with, “License is in the slype!” to reassure her after the kerfuffle the night before, but other than that, there had been not contact. And 8 hours is a LONG time for us to go without chatting.
I continued to wander around. I saw the Saturday docents setting up, and asked them for the keys to the triforium. I saw a security guy and asked him if anyone had turned in the camera. They all congratulated me and offered to help out in any way they could. Everyone was amazingly helpful and friendly. I recall having felt that they were somehow authority figures we were going to have to trick or con to get up into the triforium, and that the security guys would somehow be and obstacle to dodge, but everyone was SO eager to help
At about this time my phone buzzed. It was Uncle Trez and Aunt Jean and their daughter Amy. “We’re out in the north cloister,” said the text. I figured they meant the garth and headed out.
It was go time. I showed them the Darth Vader grotesque, then walked around front where others were assembling.
This was it, I remembered thinking. All the planning, all the thoughts, everything over the past year, and now the start of the tour was the start of the events. I began talking about the history of the cathedral and the Ex Nihilo sculptures, and about the movie The Devil’s Advocate. This is stuff I didn’t get to do on the normal tour. More people started showing up. My folks were there, Patrick C. came up. Since I was now in full tour guide mode I wasn’t able to greet them individually but gave each of them a nod of recognition as they came up and caught my eye. I dispatched my dad to ask the security guy in the basement if the camera had been turned in.
It began to spittle, so I moved the group indoors. I snagged the triforium keys, and asked where I should go so as not to be in the way of the other tour groups. They told me, “Oh wherever,” so I had to improvise. I pulled them to the north aisle half way down the transept for most of the standard nave speech.
More and more people were coming. We were up to 30 people or so at this point in our group, and as I took them across to the Space Window, I fell into a normal pattern and felt myself slip into the flow of my standard docent speech. I saw the Bachmans and the Schroeders join us. Then Dan L.
We did the rest of the tour of the main level pretty much by the book. I was able to sprinkle in some personal anecdotes such as, “The spot you’re standing right now is where I asked Julie to marry me,” and “When Julie sang me the vocalise that night, she filled this entire space.”
I left out a couple things, such as not telling them about the Canterbury pulpit. But on the whole, I was giving the tour of my life.
When we finished with St. Mary’s chapel I pointed out the canons by the slype and said that Julie’s wedding dress (and the license) were now inside there. Then I said, “Normally I’d take us downstairs to the crypt level chapels, but instead we’re going to do something extra and fun. I’ve got the keys for the triforium level.” Much oohing and aahhing.
Now the elevator to the triforium level only holds 12 people. Normally these tours are done by two docents. But I had to run shuttles. I dropped off the first load, went down, then came back to find that I’d shoved my people into an unlit hallway that ended at a locked door. I elbowed my way through, opened the door, and we found ourselves right up next to the clerestory stained glass.
It was super neat. I began telling the stories of my favorite windows. Everyone was hushed looking down. There was a real sense of being an exclusive insider. The fact that there are cables and stuff running all over the place reinforced the fact that this was a real behind the scenes tour.
After the triforium, I tried to figure out how to get them down to the West Balcony. This involved some doing, and unfortunately the elevator started malfunctioning, and we ended up with a bunch of people trapped at one point. Fortunately they were able to go down and get out on the ground floor, and others who were trapped upstairs found their way down the stairs. The last time I’d done this the door didn’t let out onto the west balcony but fortunately today it was unlocked. After a hectic period of me running up and down the stairs and elevators like Buster Keaton, I had had a preponderance of my guests safely ensconced on the West balcony. At this point I was totally off the tour script and just talked about the cathedral and other things, hanging out and chatting with people in the lofty perch of the west balcony, looking out over the nave.
I called Elianna who had called me earlier about something and asked her to bring Julie’s grandfather’s tie tack which I’d forgotten. Trish grabbed the phone and hollered into it that I needed to eat something. I wasn’t at all hungry. I was coasting on the high of a successful tour, which I usually am after even a normal day docenting. And of course I was still in wedding anxiety mode, although that had faded to a dull background twitch. The sky was still overcast, but not raining.
I headed back to the JW, and shockingly found street parking. I was carrying a bunch of stuff from the car…Rachel’s gift bag, my cell phone charger, some other stuff I’d forgotten but picked up from 206. In spite of this I decided to grab a sandwich to go at Corner Bakery on the same block as the hotel. As I was waiting for my order, Julie’s Uncle Paul came up. He and Marcia and Young Paul and Laura (YP’s gf) and Uncle Terry were having lunch there, so I joined them. It was really enjoyable and I’m glad I ran into them. I’d been feeling oddly off on my own and disconnected for such a busy, ME centric day. So it was really nice to have some relaxed sit down time with people who very shortly would be family.
I ate but didn’t linger. I stopped by the store in the lobby to pick up shoe polish, since I’d run out of time to get my shoes polished professionally that week. I told the clerk that I was the groom, and she said, “Brian?” I said, no, not one of the weddings here at the JW, I’m getting married up at the Cathedral. I needed black shoe polish and all they had was one they’d opened already, so they gave it to me for free. I went back to my hotel room, and commenced to Get Ready To Get Married.
OK, I thought. This time I mean it. This really IS the last shower I’ll take as a single man.
24 Tuesday Nov 2009
As happy as we were with the photos that ran in the Washington Post (even the one with me ridiculously sticking my tongue out), the masterpieces just released by Anne and Bill Holland are even better. Check out their blog posts:
Julie and Andrew’s wedding at the National Cathedral and DAR, Part One
Julie and Andrew’s wedding at the National Cathedral and DAR, Part Two
25 Sunday Oct 2009
Posted High Flight, Our Wedding, This is the day
inIn a few hours we will head to Dulles Airport and board the honeymooners’ redeye to Paris.
But first, this happened.
25 Sunday Oct 2009
Posted Exposition, High Flight, Our Wedding, This is the day
inThe photographers were none too pleased with us.
By the time we finished our joyride around the National Mall, the incredible sunset had almost completely receded. We had no sooner stepped into the DAR lobby when all three of our lens-warriors, visibly bristling with haste, appeared between us and our guests. “You need to get up to the roof,” Bill Holland politely told us through a tight smile. “Now.”
We obliged, even though the cocktail-hour crowd had noted our arrival. “We’ll be right back!” we sang out to our applauding guests as we slipped past them and up the marble stairs. Fortunately the photo session didn’t last much longer than the remaining daylight; doubly fortunately, there was just enough of that left to backlight the monuments and throw the receding rainclouds into impressive relief. The photographers almost certainly got some killer roof shots of us dancing, modeling our rings, posing with the Washington Monument over our shoulders and genuinely laughing ourselves silly at how perfectly the day was going. (“This,” said Washington Post Bill, “is what we call a target-rich environment.”) In short order, we were back downstairs in the lobby, sharing our giddy joy and drinks with our guests.
We’d hired a DJ several months ago, at the urging of a half dozen folks who did not trust us to rig up an iPod to whatever speakers could be found at DAR. I’d never met Miles myself, but trusted him to fall into place just as everything else had so far. He did not disappoint, reading the cocktail crowd and picking just the right moment to herd everyone out onto the portico for the wedding party grand entrance and our first dance as newlyweds.
Neither & nor I am particularly graceful on our feet. Accordingly, back when we were planning this, we’d had a decision to make: we could either resign ourselves to the clutch-and-rock first dance that is the routine province of folks who dance like we do, or we could sign up for some lessons and do this for real.
Last year we had laughed at those ridiculous people, slaves of the Wedding Industrial Complex, who pay good money for weeks and weeks of ballroom dancing lessons just so they could do a single silly dance. So of course, we wound up becoming those people and doing exactly that. (The laws of irony will inevitably turn you into the object of your own ridicule.)
For weeks and weeks, under the tutelage of a pleasant professional ballroom dancer named Jen, we marched through the steps of the Official Dance of Entry-Level Newlyweds: the “American Rumba.” I’d wanted a tango, but it was unclear whether my tightly-fitted gown or my natural clumsiness could accommodate the deep lunges. So the rumba it was.
I did not regret it as Miles queued up our first-dance song, a live recording of Chucho Valdes at the Village Vanguard riffing on “My Funny Valentine.” A true tango would have been crowded and awkward on the portico, hemmed in by guests and heat towers (which turned out to be unnecessary; the temperature implausibly cracked 70 degrees on my wedding night, another celestial gift). The rumba, on the other hand, fit into the space like a hand in a glove. Several hecklers had fun at the expense of our obvious ballroom dance instruction, but dance we did, and if the pictures come out half as good as we felt then the lessons will have paid for themselves.
Our bridal party, and then lots of other people, joined us on the floor for the second dance: a swing, to the accompaniment of one of our favorite songs. We’d first heard Paul and Storm in concert on one of our earliest dates, promptly fell in love with their brand of nerdy humor, and soon discovered our shared personal theme music: “Oh No, You’re Talking Out Your Ass Again.”
After we’d paid it suitable homage, we figured, we’d sit for dinner before we opened the floor back up for more dancing. Miles obliged, queuing up some Gipsy Kings and instructing everyone to head in to their assigned tables (indicated by &’s handiwork: table cards featuring Roman numerals superimposed over various Monet paintings of Rouen Cathedral).
Barbara had insisted, last month, that we could not simply put tealight lamps on each table and call them centerpieces. Not even if they were Moroccan-style perforated metal lamps. Not even if we painted them copper. No, she said, flowers were required and she would see to those.
I happily located a florist, outside the Beltway in the vast indistinct land I know only as “Outer Virginia.” Barbara von Elm lived on an actual farm, received us over her giant heavy Pottery-Barn-esque kitchen table, and nearly fell off her chair when I described the scene we were hoping to set at the reception. “Well, it’s at DAR, in the great library. But the ceremony is at the National Cathedral, and we’re much more into the Gothic architecture than the American neoclassical. We love fiddlehead ferns, the way they look like wrought iron. My bridesmaids are carrying Spanish fans and my dress is all lace. And we’ve got these great Moroccan perforated lanterns that we want to use. I guess if you wanted to sum up our theme, it’d be… Spanish-Moroccan-Gothic.”
And FloristBarbara delivered. (“I just had to,” she said afterwards. “Every other bride I talk to wants simple yet elegant. How often do you get to do Spanish Moroccan Gothic?”) At the center of each table was a platter of cranberry lilies, orchids, eucalyptus and fiddlehead ferns, surrounding our beloved copper Moroccan lanterns. A larger collection of the same flowers spilled across the mantelpiece in the gallery, and the library tables and place-card table were set with tall vases. And because these people are so damn good at weddings and don’t miss a detail, someone had scattered a handful of orchids around the base of the cake stand.
The cupcakes had made it into formation, orderly arrayed on the copper-painted cake stand we’d ordered off of eBay last week. Some of the cakes were handsomer than others, but all had survived the trip from my kitchen to the caterer’s to DAR, intact and proudly homemade as ever. Strictly speaking, there was no cake topper; the two cupcakes on the top tier were each garnished with a chocolate-covered strawberry (decorated to resemble a tux and a gown respectively), and the only plastic people anywhere on the cake stand were a pair of ninjas hiding among the cupcakes.
We’d happened upon the ninjas fortuitously, while waiting in the checkout line at Fran’s Cake and Candy Supply. While I picked out packets of cranberry-colored sugar flowers from the glass case, & explored the bins of plastic toy cake toppers. “Look at these,” he chortled, holding up a two-pack of ninjas. “Who would put ninjas on a cake?”
Pause for a moment.
Double take.
“Um,” I said, “We would?”
And so we did. (Because, for the record, in a battle against pirates they’d win.)
My freshly-minted husband and I sat at a sweetheart table adjacent to the cake stand, a fortunate thing since I couldn’t stop looking at it. I had baked my own wedding cake out of one hundred and seventy-five handmade cupcakes. No longer a mere dilettante, I had arrived. “That’s our wedding cake,” I couldn’t stop repeating incredulously to &. “I made all those!” “Yes, you did!” he’d reply with his inexhaustible smile.
We’d been warned that we wouldn’t have time to eat more than a few bites of dinner. This didn’t sound right to us at all, so we went out of our way to make sure we at least tasted everything. A good thing, too, even though we didn’t get to finish a plate. The pinot-noir poached pear filled with gorgonzola mousse? Wasn’t even as yum as the sweet corn timbale, or the crispness of the vegetables inside the stuffed chicken, or Barbara’s excellent wine choices. And before we could get to the dessert course (the cupcake plated alongside an ice cream napoleon), there were the toasts to be made.
For these everyone gathered in the library. In another lifetime it had been a theater; the proscenium was now a reference desk, but the parterre boxes on either side of the stage were intact. We made our way up to one of these, toasting flutes in hand and Elianna and Brad in tow. (Rather than attempt to recount their toasts, which were brilliant, I’m going to see if they’ll give us copies to post here.)
Eli toasted us first, then Brad. Then & made a toast of his own, grateful and heartfelt and short, and then it was my turn.
Perhaps because I finally could, I came unglued. My toast was a spontaneous litany of compliments, metaphors, adjectives to describe my husband and how he made me feel. Like much extemporaneous speech flavored with champagne, it eventually degenerated into semi-coherence, from which a refrain emerged – “So happy. So happy. So happy” – accompanied by tears of same. Fortunately, because the bride can get away with such things, the libraryful of guests chose the appropriate moment to applaud and cut me off.
More dancing followed, more table-surfing, more running into old friends in the hallways and restrooms and various display rooms of the DAR museum. The cupcakes were a huge hit, as were the truffle-favors which had materialized as if by magic on the lobby table where the place cards had been. There were so many people to find and hug and thank and love on. We could not keep pace with the passage of time. In what seemed like minutes it was suddenly late, quittin’ time at DAR, and our wedding reception was drawing to a close.
But we weren’t done yet. After bidding good night to the grownups in the crowd, a good dozen of us each grabbed a copper Moroccan lantern off the dining tables, took our leave of DAR, and set out in a goofy tipsy parade across the Ellipse toward our hotel. We had a honeymoon suite off the roof deck at the J. W. Marriott, where people would soon be bringing the remains of the open bar. It was a glorious night in Washington, almost summery for October, and we waved to the White House as we walked right past it.
I’m not sure how late the afterparty ran; 1 or 2 am, I think. I wasn’t paying attention to the clock any more. At some point or another, my wedding day technically ended when a clock struck midnight somewhere and the calendar shifted over to today. It didn’t matter; we were still coasting on the pure ridiculous high that comes from getting married the way we just had. It carried us all the way through to the departure of the last guests, then upstairs and into our wedding night. We were, at that precise moment, as fulfilled and satisfied as either of us had ever been.
We’d done it. We’d pulled it off. I’d married a man of the substance of dreams, and our wedding had been the stuff of legend. The Washington Post would profile us in the next few weeks. Our grandchildren would hear these stories. We had made history in our own lives, and now we were going to bed. As of today, as of this moment, all was right in the world.