My First Post as Someone's Husband!

That "someone" is, of course, Sarah, and the wedding was pretty much perfect. We started with the not-quite-clear vision of "whimsical", and evolved it into "unique; nerdy without making people who don't get the references feel left out" which...isn't much more defined than "whimsical". However, it did give us some degree of freedom to tailor each element of the wedding to our sense of quirkiness.

For example, the ceremony music - instead of just using Pachebel's "Canon in D", we drew from indie band's instrumental songs and the Vitamin String Quartet tribute albums, allowing us to feature bands like Frightened Rabbit and The Album Leaf, while including songs like "Falling Slowly", "Hunger Strike", and the 600 AD piano piece from the Super Nintendo game, "Chrono Trigger" (not sure the playlist got to that point before the ceremony started - honestly, I didn't even hear the music as we came down the stairs). For the bridal party, we were able to use the Harry Potter theme music, as well as an instrumental version of a Macklemore song.

As Sarah and I shared our first kiss... Well, our first kiss as a married couple... Well, our first kiss as a married couple wearing our wedding rings, we played "At Last" by Etta James, a favorite of ours that was almost our first dance song, and a song we very much wanted at the wedding, but one that we weren't sure we'd have time to play later. I think it worked perfect, with the music coming up as Kerrie instructed us to kiss, and then sweeping in fully as we ascended the stairs to leave.

We followed this by a string version of another favorite - "Everlong" by the Foo Fighters - and then, if people took this long to head over to cocktail hour, the closing theme song to "The Empire Strikes Back". Here's the thing, though - I don't think you had to know what any of those songs were to enjoy the ceremony. The pre-ceremony music was just supposed to entertain if you were just waiting, and fade into background music if you were chatting with someone. The Harry Potter theme is a pretty song, and the Macklemore song was a mostly-piano piece that had the perfect rhythm for walking up the aisle. "At Last" is pretty self-explanatory, while the rest of the recessional music was just pretty instrumentals.

The ceremony itself was chock full of various references (and I will post the entire thing here later for all to read). Some were explained during the ceremony, such as the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling, and the Madeline L'Engel and Rainer Maria Rilke readings. Others were hinted at, but not so overt. The final bit before the vows, "Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now." was attributed to "a friendly neighbor", and I'm sure there were some in the audience who didn't quite get the reference to a late TV host that most people in my age group watched as children, and that's understandable, as it's not necessarily something he'd have said on his show, "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood".

"Do you mind if I tell you a story?" (at the beginning of the ceremony)
"We are all just stories in the end; make it a good one."
"Just be magnificent."
"Allonsy!" (all at the end of the ceremony)
All of the above are from the new "Doctor Who", the first two from the Eleventh Doctor, the 3rd and 4th from the 10th Doctor.

"They made cocoa and got engaged" is a reference to the very first Doctor, on one of his very first adventures (the earliest adventure that still remains fully intact), "The Aztecs". They visit the Aztecs, and the Doctor befriends an older woman. They share cocoa, which to her is a marriage ritual, but he doesn't realize until after the fact. The First Doctor was a rather serious character, and this was one of the first examples of the quirkiness that would characterize the Doctor that we all know and love.

"First, the Earth cooled. Then, the dinosaurs came, but they died and turned to oil." is from the inferior-to-the-original-yet-underrated movie, "Airplane II: The Sequel".

Kerrie's explanation of the symbolism of the rings features bits of a marriage ceremony from the science-fiction show "Eureka" that aired on SciFi/Syfy for 5 seasons a few years back. The entire run is available on Netflix, and I highly recommend it. The actual quote, from Season 3, Episode 4 is as follows: "Love is timeless, transcending everything we know, everything we understand and giving us strength and comfort forever. What is past is now present. And what is present will become your future. That is what love is – never ending."

Sarah's ring vow: "My dearest friend, if you don't mind, I'd like to join you by your side, where we could gaze into the stars, and sit together, now and forever. For it is plain as anyone could see, we're simply meant to be." is from the movie "The Nightmare Before Christmas".

My ring vow is a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke:
"Understand, I'll slip quietly
Away from the noisy crowd
When I see the pale
Stars rising, blooming over the oaks.
I'll pursue solitary pathways
Through the pale, twilit meadows,
With only this one dream:
You come too."

"Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts." is a line from "Henry VI" by William Shakespeare.

Everything from there until the "Remember, we are all just stories in the end..." is written by myself and Kerrie, and paraphrases some of Robert Fulghum's book "From Beginning to End".

And then, of course, was the kiss. After all of that, we couldn't just have Kerrie tell us to kiss, so we called upon yet another nerdy reference, one of the granddaddies of nerdom, "The Lord of the Rings". The actual quote comes from "The Return of the King" and is as follows: "And he took her in his arms and kissed her under the sunlit sky, and he cared not that they stood high upon the walls in the sight of many. And many indeed saw them and the light that shone about them as they came down from the walls..." It is Faramir and Eowyn's first kiss after Faramir proposed to Ewoyn (notable as the only woman in pretty much all of Tolkien's masterpiece to actually do anything...ignore the fact that when she agrees to marry Faramir she basically agrees to regress into the same type of woman as all the rest in that story and just remember her as the bad-ass that snuck into battle and took out the Witch-King (leader of the Ringwraiths) because that's way more awesome).

As for the reception, for those that didn't recognize the introduction music, the parents and parties came out to the "Doctor Who X" theme (the theme song for the Tenth Doctor), while Sarah and I came out to "I Am The Doctor", which is kind of the unofficial theme song for the Eleventh Doctor; sort of the leitmotif for the music in his adventures.

Our first dance was to "Love, Reign O'er Me" by Pearl Jam, released as their Christmas Single a few years back, and also on the soundtrack to the Adam Sandler film "Reign Over Me", which approximately 4 people actually remember, and even fewer actually saw. If it came out 10 years earlier, I'd say that Sandler played a good-for-nothing slacker who discovered some hidden talent and bounced from zany joke to zany joke before realizing that he had to grow up just enough to win over the love of a beautiful woman and secure his financial future, but since it came out during his "I'm a serious actor" phase, I'm guessing it's pretty much the same movie, just with no humor, and thus, probably unwatchable. Ok, that's completely unfair of me. In truth, the film is far more serious than I give it credit for, and received mixed reviews, though mostly positive.

At any rate, it is a cover of the Who's song, with which I was not familiar before hearing Pearl Jam's version. Now, I've long expressed frustration at people hearing a cover and thinking it was an original (The Indigo Girls did NOT write "Romeo & Juliet"), particularly when the truth is revealed and the cover is still preferred. However, I was fully aware that it was a cover, and upon hearing the Who version...yeah, the Pearl Jam version is better. This happens from time to time, though. Many think the Johnny Cash version of "Hurt" is superior to the Nine Inch Nails version. Bob Dylan actually changed the way he plays "All Along the Watchtower" after hearing Jimi Hendrix's version. I'm ok with this, when it is true (The Indigo Girls' version of "Romeo & Juliet" is NOT superior to the original), which it simply is in this case. It's a very similar version, but Eddie Veddar's voice wins the day.

Anyway, on to the centerpieces.

The recipes on the bags of flour came from three sources. The potato soup recipe came from the back of the bag of Bob's Red Mill Potato flour. We used it because it seemed like a great base for other soups - for example, if you add mushrooms, you have a cream of mushroom base for various casseroles. The other recipes were found online: Gluten Free Onion Rings recipe comes (with some modifications) from simplygluten-free.com, while the Vanilla (or Chocolate) Macaroons came from www.freecoconutrecipes.com.

A note about the macaroons - if you look at the recipe on the website, there is no coconut flour listed in the ingredients for the chocolate macaroons. We weren't sure if that was a mistake, or not, so we kitchen-tested the recipe, making a half batch with flour, and a half batch without. Both are tasty, but we actually found that omitting the coconut flour made them a little moister, and left the chocolate flavor a little more pronounced, though they were more difficult to work with. If you choose to make them, I would do a similar test for yourself. I don't think you'll be disappointed.



I'm sure I'll have more stories to share later, but I just wanted to get some notes up here about the main part of the day. It was an amazing day; the weather was perfect, the ceremony and reception were nearly flawless, and I am so proud to be married to my beautiful wife and to have shared the day with my friends and family.