So long and thanks for all the fish

The wedding was amazing. The pre-wedding activities were stressful but it all came together in the end. Having never planned a wedding before, I should probably not comment on the pre-wedding activities, all I can say is that three alpha females (the bride, the sister, and the mom) under stress can lead to some flying shrapnel. Perhaps I’m not used to being around family dynamics that are, shall we say, a little blunt and in-your-face.

The wedding theme was the 1930’s. The wedding was held in a vintage theater. The bride’s dress was period style, off white, beaded, and absolutely stunning. She made her headpiece to match and all of the girls in the wedding party had period hairdos.
They also had usherettes in period costume, popcorn and soda (in old time small glass bottles) at the wedding, a juggler to entertain the audience before the wedding, an opera singer to perform during the wedding, and a totally laid back member of the local opera to perform the ceremony. It was incredible.

The reception afterwards was held in a vintage 1930’s restaurant. Each table had a betta fish in a bowl and a little mesh bag of Legos. My son, who had been tagging along on the coat tails of a bunch of women all weekend, finally found something to his liking. While the party swirled around him, he kept acquiring more Legos as people dropped them off at his table as they walked by. At the end of the evening, he had quite the impressive tower going.

A big hit at the reception was the old time photo booth that was set up for people to take photos to leave for the bride and groom as well as photos for themselves. The kids and I took our photos for the wedding scrapbook and then the kids proceeded to go totally nuts with their personal photos. I wandered over a few times to make sure they were letting everyone else have their turn but at the end of the evening, they each had a stack of photos, some of which were hilarious. At least I almost pee'd my pants when I saw the photo they devised with my daughter cold cocking my son. I don't think the other mothers there thought it was quite as funny...

We ended the evening with people asking us if we could take the betta fish home since a lot of the wedding participants were flying home on airplanes and didn’t think betta fish would make it through security (are they explosive in a compressed cabin?). So we left the party with 8 betta fish and drove the 2.5 hours home.

I think it has to be the most creative wedding I’ve ever been to. Nothing was conventional and it was a total blast.