Josh and Leslie's wedding, and a busy weekend...

Friday evening, Josh and Leslie had their wedding rehearsal. I was late in arriving, because I didn't leave work as early as I would have liked to, and, on top of that, I still hadn't picked up the tuxes...

Anyway, after I got it all picked up and I arrived at the church, I soon discovered that I was not the last person to arrive -- Josh, Leslie, and her family were also not there. They were about five minutes behind me.

The rehearsal lasted all of about 30 minutes -- it was very quick for two run-through's. After that, we headed over to Old Town Winchester and had dinner at one of the restaurants there. I forget the name of the place, but it was a very nice place. Dinner was good, and the place was crowded -- recipe for fun times. :)

After dinner, Josh and Leslie gave the bridesmaids and the groomsmen their gifts, as well as gave little speeches about them. My gift was a set of virtual fighting gloves. These will come in handy when I get the urge to beat up someone...

On Saturday, I went to confession at St. Veronica's. After that, I went back to the apartment, and found Josh trying to get the printer to print the wedding programs properly. After trying on his computer as well as mine, we eventually gave up and decided to take it to a place and have it done professionally. Josh told me to go to the UPS store near our place.

I got there, and we had a problem: they didn't have the font that Josh used. That turned out to be not such a big problem: we found one that was extremely close to it in style, and I changed the program so that it would all work. Josh had also made a PDF of the program, but we discovered that Adobe was having a problem printing these in booklet format, double-sided. After spending about 30 minutes re-formatting it with the new font, the UPS assistant and I discovered that the printer wasn't going to print double-sided and in booklet format, no matter what setting we used. With only 45 minutes to spare before I had to put on my tux and get to Josh's wedding, I got directions to the place and booked it over to Kinko's...

At Kinko's, I had 30 minutes to explain to them what needed it get done, as well as do it. Explaining took a while, but the printing began rather quickly and everything was OK. In that time, Josh had gotten ready for the wedding, and he was on his way to the store. When he got there, I went back to the apartment, got cleaned up, put on my tux, and called him to see if he needed help. Turns out he was finished and on his way out. He took 50, because he was already on it -- I took the tollway, because he had a head start on me and we were already late. The wedding was supposed to start at 1:45 PM with the Litany of the Saints. It was 1:30 and I had about an hour's drive ahead of me. I got to the church in about 45 minutes. No, I wasn't speeding! (...much...) Josh was about 20 minutes behind me. The tollway saved me a lot of time.

Did I get flak? Of course. I will gladly take the blame for it, because on the wedding day, the blame rests solely upon the shoulders of the best man (he's the best man for the job!), and the praise rests upon the newly married couple. Not that I subscribe to that policy myself, but in this case, it's for Josh...

Anyway, the wedding was fairly normal. Aside from the groom and his best man being one-and-a-half hours late (because we should have been there at about 1 PM), everything else went fine.

The reception went over pretty well. I hadn't written the speech, but I'd been thinking a whole lot about it, so when it was time to give the speech, I felt semi-ready, but it seemed to be received rather well. There were a lot of other speeches after mine, so any flubs that I made were graciously covered up by the Maid of Honor, the parents of the bride, the brother of the bride, and two of her bridesmaids. At least I felt better about it, anyway.

The dancing was fun. I proved to myself, once again, that I´m not good at it. I hadn't practiced swing in so long that it wasn't even funny. I felt like a lump of clay trying to be graceful and not succeeding...

After the reception, I helped Ken, Alaina, and the family of the bride take all the wedding presents to Josh and Leslie's new townhouse. After that, there was a small party at Sarah's house.

The rest of the weekend was fairly standard: singing at Christendom on Sunday, practicing with the Palestrina choir, and then heading back -- that about sums it up...