I can totally see Sara doing this...

Mr T Likes the Double Shot Expresso

Good ol' Country Wedding

Got back this afternoon from seeing my old University pal Jordan get married.. never seen a guy grin so much than he was yesterday. Congrats to him and Natacha!

It was really a great weekend, so much of the old university crew was there.. Jordan, Beetle, Mark, Sarah, Halle.. people I haven't been able to hang out with in a long time.

The Friday night Sarah, Halle (my date for the event), and Mark got into Ottawa and crashed at my place. By 12:30 we were on the road to Vinton, Que which is a bit East of Shawville. Complete new territory for me (I don't get to Quebec much!). Got to the B&B we were all staying at 2pm. Nice place really, the Spruceholme Inn, old mansion converted into the business:



It was a bit of a mad rush as the wedding was supposed to start at 3 and I had to shower and suit up still. Apparently with the proper motivation I can shower quickly! Got to the church by 2:50 (thank god it was close by) but then the wedding was delayed till 3:45 so we could have relaxed a bit. Nice ceremony, although I'm not used to the traditional Catholic wedding.. up, down, up, down.. it was exercise at least!

Here's the wedding party:


From left to right you have Jordan, his brother Everitt, Natacha, Beetle, plus a whole pile of people I don't know. The bridemaids are apparently all Natacha's sisters. Knowing my own anxieties about Jade when she's older, I really feel for Natacha's Dad!!

Here's me and Halle at the church:



So with Natacha's family being farm folk.. naturally the wedding procession has to have a tractor, right? :)


So for the dinner and reception, we went to Natacha's homstead (farm) where they had a HUGE tent set up (at least 150 metres long I think) for all the tables and the dancefloor. The hilarious thing was that the men's "urinal" was a ditch about 15 metres away from the tent! It was well protected of course... and what else are you going to do for an outside wedding? Renting a dozen porta-potties for guys who really don't care where they pee is a bit foolish! Besides, it lead to fun contests.. "Who can pee the farthest into the ditch" or "I dare you to try to jump over the ditch" Ah, good times.

Folks at the table...


Sarah, looking as beautiful as ever, and my old univ. roommate Mark, who shares the exact birthday as me. You may be thinking he looks crazy, and you're not that far off! The sideburns are killer!!


Tanya and JJ. I hadn't seen JJ in 8 or 10 years. Forgot how damn funny he is. I thought for sure mash potato was going to come out my nose I was laughing so much.


JJ and me. Notice now I have the booze induced silly grin and the slightly glazed over eyes.. I think we were on the 5th bottle of wine by this point.

The rest of the evening was a blast.. the bunch of us catching up on missed times. I believe the final wine bottle count was 8. I discovered I will pretty much dance to anything with enough booze in my system. There are some funny stories, but I won't blog about them. :)


This is the latest picture in the evening I have of myself, but it's still relatively early. At this point I believe I was pondering whether the next drink was going to be rye or wine... either that, or I was checking somebody out. ;)


Notice the overall reddish tinge to my face, the eyes starting to look lazy, overall looking like I'm far far away. It'll be interesting to see what other folks have on their cameras from later in the evening..

Anyhow, everyone got home safe and sound later that night and everyone was feeling relatively ok the next morning. When we left the inn, we went through this very cool and very old covered bridge... weee!


That was pretty much it. As always, we all promised to try and get together more often. Hopefully this time we stick to it. I miss these guys & girls a lot.