Abi and I got up at 4am last Thursday to catch a plane to the Twin Cities of Minnesota. We went to celebrate the marriage of my best friend Jer to his wonderful wife (as of this posting!) Megan.

 

The weather was great and made m slightly miss that part of the world. We had a rental car to get around, and I spent a lot of time running around the suburbs on wedding related matters. We stayed with Abi's friend Lindsay (She was Abi's maid of honor if you recall or care).

 

Thursday night was the bachelor party. We headed to this really unique (read total ghetto dive bar) place where they have bocce ball in the basement. We set up a round robin tournement in teams of 2 while we drank local microbrews (I miss lienenkugels!!!) and ate pizza (had my first ever shrimp pizza). My team came in 2nd place. After that we went to some bars to hang out on the hip strip in St Paul--Grand Ave.

 

Friday was full of tuxedo fittings and the rehersal dinner. They totally screwed up my pants, so they had to fly in new pants from Illinois.  That meant I needed to pick up my pants on the way to the wedding Saturday. The rehersal went well and then we all headed out to the rehersal dinner, just across the St Criox river in Wisconsin. That posed another problem--none of the rental cars could leave the state! So after cramming in the backseat of a new VW Bug, we made our way to Mama Maria's, a fantastic Italian restaraunt. It was great to chat with friends from High School and College that I haven't seen in forever.

 

Saturday was the big day. My pants did arrive and fit this time. :) The wedding was beautiful and the "I Do's" were said. I was in a Tux from noon till about 11:30 that night--Man did my feet hurt. But it was totally worth it. We did have more excitement as we got to the reception hall (about a 30 minute drive from the ceremony location): A tree had fallen and knocked power out to the suburb we were in. So the first 1.5 hours of the reception was done by dim candle light. It wasn't too bad, and everyone seemed to deal with it fairly well--especially the bride and groom! When the power came back on, Jer and Brock (business partner and groomsman) spent another 45 minutes trying to get hte DJ equipment to work. Yes they hired a professional DJ to work the reception, but apparently he wasn't too skilled in fixing his own equipement and since Jer and Brock own their own DJ business, they got it working. I was kind of miffed Jer needed to spend his time doing that, but that is Jer for you--always ready to fix whatever needs fixing.

 

Sunday was kind of lazy. We met one of Abi's friends for lunch in St Paul, then headed to the Original Green Mill restaraunt to watch the Cowboys game. While the game didn't go in the 'Boys favor, we were surprised to learn that our good friend Nate (nickname=OMC, also in our wedding) was in town for the Vikes game. He was able to come out and visit us for awhile! It was awesome to see him again after a few years.

 

Monday meant another early morning to get to the airport. We had a 3 hour layover in Salt Lake City. WooHoo for that. But that did allow Abi time to turn her phone on and learn that Lindsay got word she passed the MN Bar exam and is now a Lawyer. Congrats to her on that! We got into Seattle about 2 and got 2 of 3 of our bags. The missing bag contained all 759 tons of Abi's hair products. uh oh.... So we had to fill out the forms, then drive all the way up to Woodinville with Abi freaking out. Luckily she calmed down as we got closer to picking up our puppies. They got very good report cards from the kennel--they were well behaved, didn't get sick, loved playing with the other dogs, slept and ate normally etc. this was a huge relief as our last vacation resulted in a very sick dog and the replacement of our upstairs flooring! They boys were very very happy to see us and we spent the evening cuddling and relaxing.

 

It was a great weekend and I'm still exhausted. I wasn't this tired after my own wedding! But I'm very happy for Jer and Megan and was so glad we could be a part of their special day. :)

 

See the pictures section for my photojournalistic capturing of the days in MN.

 

~ddv