wedding

Generally, I'm not crazy about doing weddings. They tend to be high pressure, low integrity events. Now, I have participated in some that were wonderful but that tends to be the exception in my experience.

This one looks like fun.



Just think... dancing into marriage rather than marching. Sounds good to me.

Alexis & Christian

My little girl was married on 8/8/08 (yeah... I had to miss the opening exercises of the Olympics). I wanted to be only the dad so I didn't take any photos and was waiting to blg until somebody sent me some. These photos were taken by my brother-in-law, Bob.

The wedding was wonderful. It took place at First Baptist of Santa Barbara They have a breath-taking setting and enough room to host the number of guests we were expecting. The service was perfect with music by Thomas Leeb, Jessica Mireles, Jamie Green, and Stephanie Katavolos. Our friend, Larry Phillips came from Schenectady, New York to perform the ceremony. Friends and family came from all over including a maid of honor from France. It was just wonderful.

Folk stayed around for a few days and some of us went on a wine tour, others did a whale watch... and we laughed and cried and drank lots of wine together.

a few more photos...

Alexis and Christian



and our family...



Alexis and Christian are moving to Phoenix in a little more than a week. I'll miss having her nearby terribly but I am so happy that she and Christian are so in love and so committed to one another.

stressed

I haven't posted in a while... and there is a reason.

My daughter, Alexis, is getting married tomorrow. All I can say is that I'm beginning to understand why certain cultures avoid having female children. I love her to death and I am incredibly proud of her but I really wouldn't want to do this again financially, emotionally, or any other way.

I have got soooo much new material to blog about and once things quiet down I'll try... except two weeks after the wedding we're scheduled to close on our condo and then move.

And Alexis and Christian are planning to move to Phoenix although neither has a job there yet.

On top of all that, we're doing a small construction project at the church that has had one interruption after another and it needs to be finished by August 25 so we can open our nursery school in the fall.

If we had tried to plan a summer with more stress than this one, I don't know what we could have changed short of a serious illness or a death in the family. Pray that neither of those happens for us and we will have made it through all of the craziness.

Gee... life is hard

My daughter is getting married in August and we're working on all of the details for the service and the reception. Parts of the preparation have been a lot of fun.

Alexis and Christian wanted two things at the reception... live music for dancing and decent wine (we do live in wine country). That presented problems. Volume rules and anti-alcohol policies ruled out many different spaces. Add to that the fact that we live in Santa Barbara where everything costs more and the possibilities narrowed quickly. We chose a venue that met our hopes, was reasonably affordable (it is Santa Barbara so reasonable is relative), allowed live music, and had a great menu. We tasted the wines available and at $20 a bottle and up, we were less than impressed. There is a $10 corkage fee so we figured anything $10 a bottle or less and we'd be ahead of the game. So... we've been having tastings of sub $10 wines.

This evening we were tasting some whites. Today, I picked up two bottles - a Tiger Hill Sauvignon Blanc from India! (as a joke, we tasted some Indian wines when we were in India in October and they were bad) and a bottle of Montes Chardonnay from Chile. From an earlier shopping trip I had bottles of Kono Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand, a Firestone Chardonnay, a Fetzer Chardonnay, and a Kendall Jackson Chardonnay - all of which were well under our $10 limit.

Cheryl made some amazing chicken and Cheryl, Alexis, Christin, and I had dinner and tastes of 6 wines.

Here are some thoughts...

Tiger Hill - very simple, watery... let's just say that everyone dumped their little tastes.

Kono Sauvignon Blanc - This wine is from the Marlborough region of New Zealand which is known for wonderful citrusy wines. Some great ones like the Kim Crawford cost $13-15 a bottle. The Kona still had some of the grapefruit flavors I associate with this region but it didn't have a lot more than that. I liked it. Nobody else did.

Fetzer Chardonnay - years ago we used to drink Fetzer Sundial and thought this would be a reasonable wine to try. The label said "apple, pear, and tropical fruits." I tasted a dominant flavor of banana which I'm not crazy about. Everybody else liked it more than I did.

Montes Chardonnay - Alexis took a sip and immediately dumped it. She said, amoxicillan! bubble gum flavored amoxicillan." Everyone dumped it.

Firestone Chardonnay - I liked this idea since Firestone is a Santa Barbara winery and they have reasonably good wines. This chard had a bit more citrus than the others. I liked it. Alexis and Cheryl didn't.

Kendall Jackson Chardonnay - KJ has some vineyards right along route 1 in the northern part of Santa Barbara county and blends grapes from a number of regions including Santa Barbara County to make these lower level wines. While this one wasn't a great wine, it also didn't have any overwhelming flaws. Everyone liked it enough to add to it our list and nobody dumped it.

We tasted reds and a few other whites earlier (I'll blog about this later) and it seems that it is much easier to find reasonable reds than whites in the sub $10 range. We'll likely purchase a few cases of the Kendall Jackson to supplement a Paul Mas Sauvignon Blanc that we purchased after an earlier tasting...

Stephanie & James

Weddings are not my favorite events. There is too much pressure to "keep up with the Joneses," the couple are often in this fog that keeps them from being truly present in the moment, and just about everyone has unrealistic expectations. So usually, I'm not crazy about them. And if it involves planning or conducting the service with someone else, it drops another notch or two or ten on my satisfaction meter.

We're in upstate NY for a friends wedding and it had every possibility of being a mess. It was hot and humid. Nobody involved lived where the service was taking place. It was a joint service with a Roman Catholic priest (the theological and liturgical differences can be insurmountable). Family came from all over the world and had competing expectations. The couple recently moved from Santa Barbara to D.C. for work and had their own mix of tensions.

Because nobody was from the place where the wedding happened (long involved story there), folk were imported for just about every piece. The priest and I both came from Santa Barbara, CA. The gospel singers in the wedding drove down from Albany. The musicians at the reception came from Boston. The florist was local and the caterer was local. Parents came from Florida and London. More & more possibilities for something to go wrong...

At the same time, James and Stephanie are wonderful people, mature enough to know what they're doing, and, even though they are as different as they could possibly be, they fit together like hand in glove. Their relationship had been tested by James being in Afghanistan for a year and had come out stronger and more solid than before.

Well... it was one of those wonderful weddings where everything fell in place and the service, with all of its disparate parts, worked. The bride glowed but it wasn't the glow of ignorance, it was the glow of love tested and found true. James looked into her eyes and was lost in the joy of commitment and discovery of a future filled with wonder, surprise, and grace. The choir was wonderful. The liturgical traditions connected well. It was a wonderful celebration for friends and family as we came together from all over the world and poured out love and support for the couple.

Congratulations James and Stephanie! May your life together be filled with love and may all of the hopes and dreams you hold and we hold for you be filled full.