11/17/08

A Weekend to Remember


This was one trip none of us will forget! You may remember groomsman Danny from last July... well, we attended his wedding this past weekend in Atlanta! Now - people always refer to Atlanta as HOTlanta, but I think we'll rename it FOGlanta. As we sat in the airport in Rochester, listening to other flights being cancelled due to (and I quote the pilot here) "poopy" weather in Atlanta, and watched people pile up at the desk to rearrange connections... we were glad of our non-stop schedule. We were also glad that our flight was NOT cancelled, merely delayed for 2.5 hours. We eventually met up at the airport with (also delayed) Novo Collegians Naomi and Kelcey, and Kelcey's husband Mike, and wound our way to Stone Mountain.

The day of the wedding dawned clear and calm, if a bit too chilly for an outdoor ceremony (once again, so much for HOTlanta). Danny called to let us know the 6PM ceremony would be moved inside, and we all met up for coffee. Long story short, with six of us (including Danny the Groom) enjoying our coffee and the view of the lake and the brisk Fall air on our fifth floor balcony, the sliding door locked behind us. After several panicky minutes and quite a bit of nervous laughter, we discovered that Kelcey had the hotel phone number saved in her cell phone (lucky it was in her pocket). So we called the front desk, and asked for someone to come let us back in. Yay for cell phones!

Fast forward through a calm and uneventful afternoon to the ceremony. The guests in their finery, men in tuxes and suits, ladies in cocktail dresses, the bride in a lovely beaded strapless gown. The stately processional, the warm welcome, the readings, the vows. The fire alarm. Yes. Fire alarm. Followed by evacuation, with outdoor temps in the forties. The most impressive thing to me was the relative calm of the bride and groom. I would have been howling! I would have stalked the empty hotel, raging at anyone I came across! But Danny was steady and calm, Shelley shed just a few quiet tears. And after the fire department came and cleared us to re-enter the building, the wedding party reassembled at the front, the smiling and laughing bride and groom RE-processed to a standing ovation, and the ceremony resumed with grace.

So how do you follow that? With cocktails and dinner and dancing to an excellent live band till they kicked us out! I must say the Hora was a first for me, and somewhat nerve-wracking (and I was just watching). Shelley looked just a little concerned as well!

So - with the couple safely married and shipped off to Cancun, we returned to our cozy nest here in Rochester. We got settled in, and when I checked my email, I discovered that some other folks have been making memories too! My friend Chloe delivered a baby girl on Friday, and my cousin Allison and her fiancé Danny popped down to the courthouse and got married on Thursday!

What a weekend!

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