Barking Space

The Travelling Trio

The three J’s went south of the border this weekend to the land of the cousins. That’s right, we travelled to Rochester for another wedding!

My cousin Kate married a crazy Scotsman named Gregor in a wonderful celebration full of family, friends and fun!

I’m a big fan of weddings!
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The Night Before Kate’s Mass

The three of us arrived in Rochester in good time and checked into our hotel. We found out immediately upon arriving (thanks to a timely call to the Fig household) that we were invited to a rehearsal dinner.

It’s a good thing we got that information package from the front desk.

Oh wait.

We didn’t.

The rehearsal dinner was great, as it reunited us with people we haven’t seen in a while.

The place was packed! The food was great! The drinks were flowing! Definitely a good time had by all.

Unfortunately, we left little J’s car seat outside as we fled indoors to escape the unholy mosquitos. We found out later that it had rained buckets, soaking the car seat.

Thanks to Sonya and her magic dryer, though, we were good to go in a few hours.

I took Mrs. J and little J back to the hotel, where I helped put the shrimp to bed, and then I headed back to the party so the ladies could get some shut-eye.

I’m not really sure if I’m allowed to talk about what happened when I went back…

Which way do I go? Oh…
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The Ceremony

The whole affair was held at a wonderful Divinity School with amazing architecture and a wonderful ambience. The Chapel itself was not too big, and had a beautiful pipe organ towards the rear of the room.

Mrs. J and I sat in the back row to allow us to escape quickly in case little J decided that she wanted to eat/poop/exclaim miracles in tongues.

It was a different perspective for us, as we’ve never really been to a ceremony in a Church with a little one. She did give us a little indication that she was going to fuss, so like a well-practiced SWAT team, we bolted out of there like nobody’s business to attend to the little one.

Everyone looked amazing, especially the bride and groom.

Kate in her mysterious ninja veil™…
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Mingling

After the ceremony, we were instructed on the itinerary for photos. This schedule was promptly destroyed by the onset of rain.

Of course, this was still much better than last year when half the people misunderstood and never showed up to be in the family portraits!

At this point I’ll reference the fact that a large portion of the guests had flown over from Scotland.

While my family is fairly gregarious, these folks were warm and full of vigor. It was as if they multiplied the good vibes in the room.

One could not help but anticipate the good times that were to come at dinner…

And this guy was one of the lightweights…
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The Reception

Steve and David started off the dinner with a quick intro using a microphone that they stole from a McDonalds drive-thru window.

Steve was lighter on the shtick than I thought he would be, which was fine, as his dad more than made up for it with his speech.

It was a warm dialogue, and demonstrated once again how tight the Rochester Figs are.

The dinner was excellent and all of the speeches were warm and caused more than their fair share of tears.

We spent a lot of the subsequent dancing on the sidelines, taking our little shrimp and her newly developing ears to quieter places in the complex. One of us would wander back now and then to take pictures and talk with people with whom we didn’t get a lot of time with during the pre-dinner mingling.

As with the rehearsal dinner, we drove back to the hotel, and feeding little J and putting her to bed, I headed over to the after-party with Dennis for a few hours.

Here are some noteworthy items…

• While Mrs. J and I didn’t get to salsa dance like pros this year, we managed to fit in a waltz with Little J.
• Emily looked really happy holding Little J. 🙂
• It was cool to hang out with my brother Ryan and his fiancée Jen.
• It’s fun to watch non-Scottish people trying to do Scottish folk dancing.
• Brunches at the Rochester Figs’ place kick major ass.
• Target and DSW Shoes are dangerous places to shop.

This is what it’s all about…
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Thanks to the Rochester Figs for another great wedding extravaganza!

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