Mossy Cottage Knits

The Wedding of the Year!

(Oh, Dear Readers, how happy I am to be back! Sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, my blogging system committed suicide. Completely, spectacularly, and in the kind of way that would've required a haz-mat team to clean up. I couldn't blog; I couldn't update existing entries to tell you what was going on; you couldn't comment; I couldn't comment; I couldn't even rebuild the blog to see if that would help. How bloo this made me and TMK! However, my blog hostess, Sheila, was able to solve the problem so now I am off to send her a treacly and unashamed love letter. In the meantime, the story about the Wedding of the Year awaits you below!)

The tour of the Winchester Mystery House was, of course, just a preamble to The Main Event, Rachael and Lala’s wedding. We had a longish drive to get to the venue and hadn’t a clue where we were going so we left at what we thought was a reasonably early time, pointed the car northward—and arrived with 1.5 hours to spare. No matter. For spur-of-the-moment entertainment, we noodled around the immediate neighborhood and soon found ourselves climbing up, up, up, up some slightly nausea-inducing steep and winding roads into a neighborhood where everything was named after a mysterious "Joaquín Miller:" Joaquín Miller Road, Joaquín Miller School, Joaquín Miller Community Center, Joaquín Miller Park. When we arrived at the top of Wherever The Hell We Were, we were astonished to find ourselves looking out at this, especially since, five minutes before, we had been in a dark-ish, gloomy valley:

Although you can’t see it in the picture, from this vantage point we could see San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the Bay, anything that any self-respecting, camera-toting tourist would pay good money to see. What we wouldn’t have given for some sunshine and clear skies, but the view was still worth the trek to the top of the hill and, um, well, yes, the burning smell coming from the car's engine.

At the end of our bonus 1.5 hours of adventuring, we wended our way back down the hill—having officially baptized our car "Joaquín Miller"—found the Sequoia Lodge, girded our loins for the weirdness of Attending An Event Where We Knew Almost Nobody, Not Even The People Who Were Getting Married, walked in, and walked right into Lala, who, yet again, looked just like her photos. By that time, I was starting to catch on to how this new-fangled photography business works…

I could wear away my fingertips describing what a magical time we had but suffice it to say the only reason we left was because we had a long drive home, else we would have stayed until the very last second of the very last minute of the very last hour of The Very Best Wedding Ever. The lovebirds looked very romantic in an embroidered cream-satin suit (Lala) and embroidered cream-satin wedding dress (Rachael). The service itself was short but sweet and moving and heartfelt and teary—and then, as if by magic, the rows of just chairs became chairs-arranged-around-tables and the whole thing spontaneously evolved into a raucous, fun fête with live music, dancing, singing, food, beverages, chocolate, liberal hugs from friends and strangers alike, and endless posing for photographs. I even found myself sucked into my first conga line. Chacha-chacha-cha-CHA!

Here, Rachael and Lala pose with in-laws and kin after the ceremony. (Question to knitters: Do you see Rachael’s hand-knit wedding shawl? Me neither. A case of emperor's clothes, perhaps? She assures us that the shawl did exist and that she remembered to put it on later but we were long gone by then. Actually the story in its entirety is that at the wedding in California she remembered her veil and forgot her shawl; in Vancouver, she remembered her shawl and forgot her veil.)

The cakes:

The required interlaced-arm, you-feed-me-I’ll-feed-you moment minus, thank goodness, the squashing of the cake in each other’s faces:

The biggest surprise was how many other bloggers or online fiberists were there besides Nathania and Janine: Nancy, Joanna, Christine, Silvia, Becca, Anne, and
Celia.

How remarkable to walk into a room hundreds of miles away from home full of what you think are going to be complete strangers, only to find out, thanks to the Internet and the online community, that that’s not the case. At no point did we find ourselves, as we had envisioned, feeling spurned and alone, and sulking in the corner like a coupla sullen wallflowers. What a wonderfully energetic and eclectic mix of people, all putting their social, political, and sartorial differences aside to support Rachael and Lala on their very important day.

So we laughed, we drank, we talked, we danced, we ate, we spectated, we toasted, we made goo-goo eyes at each other, TMK tried an Idaho Spud for the first time and pronounced it ghastly, but mostly we marveled at how one pair of mistake-riddled socks that I knit five years ago led us to be in Oakland, California, watching two people we had never met make a loving, lifelong commitment to one another.

Nathania, Janine and Yours Truly, dressed like, of all things, a tennis coach (what was I thinking?)

An unfortunately dark photo of TMK and Janine’s husband, John, who collectively referred to themselves as “blog fodder,” posing for the camera. The turning of the backs to the camera? John’s idea! In fact, it was amazing how much blogging people “in the know” went out of their way to keep TMK’s face hidden.

Congratulations, Rachael and Lala, and thank you so much for inviting us to the wedding!

Friday: Rachael and Lala do Seattle!

(For the curious among you, here is information about the mysterious Joaquín.)

Posted by Ryan at April 12, 2006 10:52 AM