Brendan and Tara’s Wedding 4

Before I begin, I’ll direct y’all to the album of pictures I took at Brendan and Tara’s wedding. Best way to view it is to click “Slideshow,” and read along with the comments.

Anyway, the wedding was in East Lansing, Michigan at the Michigan State Alumni Chapel. I finally found out why: It’s where Tara’s parents got married.

Before I found that out, it didn’t make much sense, since both Brendan and Tara went to Northwestern, which is a direct rival of Michigan State.

Although that did get an amusing nod as Brendan and Tara exited the church to what I imagine is the first playing of the Northwestern fight song as a recessional in the history of the MSU Alumni Chapel.

The ceremony was really nice, and Tara’s dad reading from Oh, The Places You’ll Go! made me cry a little. Shut up, it was really sweet, you would have cried too.

I was kind of amused towards the end of the ceremony when the minister asked the congregation to recite the Lord’s Prayer and Jon Lewis, Jamie and I looked at each other and went…uh…Shma Yisrael?

Anyway, the reception was quite fun, although the wedding photographer must have taken about four million pictures, because it took the wedding party almost an hour to make it there.

They also cut the cake almost immediately after arriving, which was a little odd to me, but hey, if it’s your wedding day and you want dessert first, you’re more than entitled to dessert first.

The speeches were all quite nice. Mark’s old Wordman persona came out of hiding during his Best Man as he came up with words to describe Brendan and Tara’s relationship that made me glad I did well on the English portion of the SAT’s.

Things get a little fuzzy after that, since I took full advantage of the open bar and was pretty hammered by the end of the evening (see last picture in slideshow).

However, I had a fan-fucking-tastic time, and it was really nice to see some of my crazy college friends for the first time in over a year.

Congratulations again to Brendan and Tara, who were so happy that it even melted my black, cynical little heart. You guys are gonna do well.

Edited to add: This post that was included in today’s update of best-of-Craigslist is highly appropriate for today.