HEY BRAIN

we interupt your regularly scheduled broadcast for this important news announcment:

we bought a couch!

ok, maybe that’s not super-important news, but it’s insanely exciting to me.  it’s big and comfy and i can’t wait for it to be delivered.  we also ordered a new dining room table and chairs and a bunch of other stuff for the house… it’s starting to come together.

see, here’s the thing – though i’m sitting on the edge of 30, every piece of furniture that i’ve ever owned has been either a hand-me-down or purchased at a thrift store.  seriously everything.  and it shows.  i have just about the ugliest collection of furniture known to man.  i have a yellow crushed velvet loveseat with no arms (it was part of a sectional), a green crushed velvet shair with no legs (i call it lutenant dan), and a high-backed, orange crushed velvet chair (it’s called the throne).

ugly. furniture.

yet it all ties together in a stange, 60′s, psychedeila way…  or at least it did.  until i moved it in to the new house and realized that it looks depressingly like i’m still living in a dorm room.

so yeah, i’m really excited to move the CV furniture into the attic (which will one day finished into a studio that will be decorated in such a way that the furniture might actually make sense again) and replace it with the super-comfy, slightly modern, dark brown sectional couch.

of course, i figure we’ll get all this nice stuff just in time to have a kid to trash it all… that’d be my luck.  because if i have a kid, he or she will probably be unbridled anarchy in the flesh like i was… sorry, wife… but it’s best that i warn you now so you can be prepared, right?

good thing we got the 5 year extended warranty on the couch, i guess.

welcome to another exciting installment of “chris’s wedding crap recap!”

i realize that this isn’t exciting reading to some of you, but bear with me.  interesting things are still to come.  just so you know, part of the reason that i’m doing this is that i have this silly habit of, every three or four months or so, going back and reading through my entire blog archives.  it’s nice to know where i am now in relation to where i was then.  that’s the main reason i started this thing.  it helps me see how i’ve grown and changed and how i’ve stayed the same.  so this is partially for archival purposes and partially for those who couldn’t make it but bear with me, because there are some fun pics coming, i promise…

THESE amazing and fun pics, however, are not by me!  they’re all by sara d. harper who was our wedding photographer and who is a good friend.  you can see even more of these (and at a slightly higher resolution) in my facebook galleries here and here.

also – if, for some strange reason, you want to purchase high rez prints of any of these, you can do so here and help support sara as she continues to take amazing photos and capture lasting memories.

anyway, where were we… ah yes…

SATURDAY MARCH 7th: the wedding day!  woke up bright and early so that i could pick up josh at the marino’s house (a couple of good friends from community group that were kind enough to put him up for the night) and get to church by 8am to get a sound check in before the wedding rehearsal.  you see, we decided that, rather than stretch this wedding thing out over two days like most people do, we’d like to do everything in one day.  that way, people don’t have to give up too much time to help us out, out of town guests that are part of the wedding don’t have to stay an extra day, and there’s no time to sit and fiddle and squirm and freak out.  it sounds stressful, i know, but it actually worked out pretty great.

so anyway, 8am sound check and then an 8:30 rehearsal start.  that actually turned into a 9am start, but that was to be expected.

so we did the rehearsal thing and then high-tailed it over to firefly grill in green hills for the rehearsal lunch.  let me just say that i absolutely love this place.  kurt over there really gave us the hookup, his waitstaff was awesome (chill, fun, attentive and efficient) and chef kristen gregory blew us away.  when we booked the place, i insisted that, aside from things that i’m allergic to, she be given a free hand to cook whatever she felt like creating for us.  she’s never failed to impress me and she didn’t let me down.  salmon, marinated, grilled chicken, fresh asparagus, delicious sauces, and some of the strangest looking but best tasting chocolate cake you’ve ever laid tongue to.  simply amazing.  it was awesome to pack out my favorite restaurant with family and friends.  thanks guys and gals!

after that, the wedding party took off and parted ways.  the girls headed back to franklin to get started getting ready and the guys took off to the anchor to get started preparing it for the reception.  we had so much help there that we were able to take off fairly quickly.  big shout outs go to shara for running the show, the ladies of our community group (for really bringing their a-game with the food), and my aunts, uncles, and cousins for throwing down on some decorations!  you guys kick butt.

so, we left the anchor in the more-than-capable hands of those folks and took off to get gussied up for the wedding.  we met back up with the girls at the church to take pictures at about 4.  we did almost every picture we could ahead of time.  because of that, we didn’t do that whole, “don’t see the bride in the wedding gown before the wedding” thing.  what we did instead was to have a moment where we shooed everyone out of the church (except for sara so she could take pics) so that i could get my first look at my beautiful bride and just have a moment or two to ourselves… it was perfect…

and then -

PHOTOS.  lots and lots of photos.  i hate getting my picture taken so it was a real challenge for me to play nice and do this.  sara really did a great job keeping it fun and loose and easy though.  here are a few for you to view…

sheesh, there were a lot of pictures…

and then, we got married.  the ceremony was extremely brief.  just the essentials.  “we’re here, here’s why, covenant under God, music, vows, rings, kiss, i now pronounce etc, DONE.”

that’s all there was to it… i think… it was a total blur to me, but i remembered my lines and didn’t drop the ring, so that’s all good.  we walked out of the church to sparklers and it was awesome!

after that, it was time to get our groove on!  the party moved downtown to the anchor where we had food, wine, and dj fat andy warming up his tables.  again, we were stunned by how many of our friends and family came out to celebrate with us.  i want to apologize if you were there and i didn’t get to talk to you!  it seemed like every time i started a conversation with someone, something else demanded my attention!  i hear that’s not unusual, but i really do feel bad that i didn’t get to talk to each and every one of you.  we both want you to know that we appreciated you all coming and being a part of our wedding and reception.  it means a whole lot to us.

ah.  ehem.  sorry.  what was i saying?  oh yeah, the party!  here are an assortment of pics from that…

our amazing wedding cake, handmade by my good friend mel segroves!  she’s a baking magician…

we were joined by many many many awesome friends, old and new.

jim made a wild toast that had me trying to explain a few things… i swear, i was a good kid (mostly)!

cutting the cake… surprisingly, we had forgotten all about this part…

in retrospect, a dollar dance might not have been the best plan…

but, for the most part, i think that a good time was had by all.  there was wine and food and music and, once the floor cleared out a bit, there was even some dancing.

we left the reception in my father’s new jag (thanks dad!) and headed to the hotel preston where we found a very… interesting… gift package waiting for us.  to the girls who left that for us, you know who you are, you are very very dirty young women and we rather enjoyed the gift.  

funny story, though… jess forgot her contacts case so i spent 30 mins of my first night as a husband trying to find a 24 hour drugstore/grocery/whatever so that she could take her contacts out!  it’s funny, but in retrospect, that’s a pretty good way to start things – serving my wife.

and then… well, you know what happens next…

we went to sleep.  what, we were tired!

ok, maybe we didn’t go to sleep immediately… 

ok so… after going through all my photos that i took while on the honeymoon and thinking through the post that i want to write, i’ve realized that there’s just too much for one post.  so i’m going to break it up into little bitty chunks with lots of pictures.  that said, i still won’t be putting all the pics up here as that wouldn’t lend itself to a decent narrative and would take up an insane amount of space.  BUT they’ll all go up on my flickr in smaller batches that sorta follow the blog, so you can follow along over there if you’d like.  honestly, the photos are going to be much more entertaining, i’m sure…

ANYWAY.  here we go…

THURSDAY MARCH 5th:  i took the two days leading up to the wedding off.  i did this for two reasons.  first, to make sure to have time to get everything ready in time for the wedding that we hadn’t had time to do yet because we’d been moving me out of my old place and into the new place and we’d both been working at a breakneck speed to try to get ahead with work enough that we felt comfortable enough leaving to enjoy our honeymoon.

second – bachelor party.

i’m old enough to have been in my fair share of weddings.  my groomsmen were and are some of my closest friends ever.  they are truly like brothers to me.  so they’ve been part of many of the same weddings with me.  as we get older and gain more experience with weddings, the bachelor’s parties that we’ve thrown have just gotten better and better.  i was pretty sure that this one would leave me hurting the next day, so we did it on thursday night instead of the day before the wedding.  that was a very wise decision.

here’s what i remember in list form (because nothing is really very connected in my memory anyway

1. sushi in the back room of ken’s
2. failed attempt to go to great escape
3. beer sellar being full of yuppie, vandy, blues wannabes
4. relocation to doc holiday’s
5. one beer, two beer, three beer… oh what’s that? a shot?
6. red headed slut, tequila, jager, jack, american honey…
7. 3crow.  more shots and beer…
8. old server friends just showing up randomly
9. creepy guy professing his love for someone else to me…
10. something about an alabaster goddess…
11. telling jeff that i was too old for this…
12. jeff telling me that this was the last time i’d have to pretend to be young enough for this…
13. even MORE shots… actually i think it was jack on the rocks at this point…
14. telling jim that i was very happy that he lives in nashville now and could be a part of this…
15. “i love you man” drunken shenanigans
16. **blank**

apparently there was some singing and jim danced on a table as well…

FRIDAY MARCH 6th: pain. and aching and stomach mess and an inability to focus.  oh man, i will NEVER do that again.  i am not as young as i once was and my body just can’t handle that much alcohol anymore.

but the show must go on.  gathered the boys for breakfast, went and picked up jess’s friend josh from his hotel, ate a big meal that did nothing to ease the pain of my hangover, ran some errands and got back to jeff’s house in time for the musician’s rehearsal.

we had all live music at the wedding.  jeff coordinated it and played guitar, jess’s friend (now my friend) josh played piano and kelley played guitar and sang.  (we also had a special song by matthew west, though since he wrote it he didn’t need to come to practice)  since none of the musicians had ever met, we decided that it would be a good idea to get them together before the wedding to hash out music.  i put jeff in charge and sat back and watched as they worked their magic.  amazing stuff.  when josh and kelley started rehearsing the song that we had chosen for our recessional, i got chills.  i also (obviously) took pictures.

you may have noticed, but i like to take pictures of jeff.  i think it’s because he’s a professional rock star and is used to being on stage, but he mostly just ignores the camera and does his thing.  that tends to make for pretty great shots most of the time.  also, i’m pretty sure he’s going to be even more famous one day than he is already, so it’ll be cool to have archival shots of his “early years” as a pro musician…

after that we all headed to evan’s house for a grill out.  i was pretty tired by then, having not recovered fully from the night before, but i wouldn’t have missed the cook out that night for the world.  good friends, good food, good music, good conversation. perfect way to end the day.

of course, at this point, jess was having her bachelorette’s party… i don’t know much about that, having obviously not been there, but there were some silly masks, a feather boa, a picture of a half-naked man and some drinks involved.

and then, sleep.  i actually called it an earlier night than i might usually have… saturday morning was going to come early…

yeah, so lots has been going on.

like what?  oh well… you know, stuff.

like, i got married.

most of you were probably aware of that as quite a few of you were either involved in that particular enterprise or were present.  i just want to take this opportunity to thank every one of you that helped, supported, gave, and cheered us on.  the church looked beautiful, the music was amazing, the reception was awesome and jumping, the food was perfect, the wine was flowing… it was an amazing day!!

near perfect, in fact.  thank you.

for those of you who weren’t there, you can see a slide show of some of the wedding photos here via sara harper who shot the wedding (and did an amazing job).

we honeymooned in sonoma county, cali and had an awesome time.  the weather was perfect and we rented a convertible and just cruised through the vineyards with the top down tasting wine and enjoying each other’s company.

perfect…

now comes the fun part where we sort through all of our stuff and figure out what goes where, what to keep, what the toss… there is still a bit of work to be done before we can settle into just being married.  on one hand, that’s a little sad.  on the other hand, it’s really exciting.  we both feel like we’ve been given the opportunity to start over to a point.  it’s invigorating even as it’s tiring.  prayers, as always, are appreciated.  but, i think this is going to be as much fun as it is tiring.  maybe that’s naive, but i really think it will.

anyway, i’ve got about two gigs of photos that i took over the course of this wedding and honeymoon thing.  once i sort through them, sift out the good ones, and edit them, i’ll post them here with a breakdown of events.

in the meantime, i leave you with this picture i took at safari west on our honeymoon of a bird named chicken who is not, in point of fact, a chicken…