The wedding on Saturday was fun and laid-back, which is how a wedding should be, I think. Of course you want to take the vows seriously, but that doesn�t mean you can�t have a laugh. When the bride�s car showed up (a very noisy muscle car), the groom turned around and started to run.

It was an outdoor wedding, and of course right on cue it started to rain. They ended up putting up an umbrella and holding it over the bride and bridesmaids. The groom was way too tall to fit under it, as Brooke (the bride) is about five foot two and Dave�s� I think about six foot seven. Yeah.

When the father of the bride was asked by the celebrant if he would give the bride away to the groom, he looked at the groom, scratched his head with indecision and said, �I dunno about that��

During the exchange of the rings, the groom dropped the ring. I saw him pick it up, but he made a show of searching long and hard for it in the grass, to the amusement of the crowd. The bride, who still had tears in her eyes (as she had since she arrived), sniffled, laughed and said, �don�t encourage him!�

And yet, despite the jokes, I have never seen a happier bride and groom. They were both choked up during the ceremony (which made me choke up too), and they just looked so happy. All couples do on their wedding day, I know, but this was just different. Seriously, there was just love oozing all over the place.

The speeches at the reception were long, but they were all great. The best man was also the best speaker, just naturally comfortable in front of a crowd and very, very funny. He actually performed a dance called the �Lava Lava�, which was kind of a parody that he and some friends made up when they were in Nepal. Highly entertaining.

I wish I had brought the cable with me to work so I could get the photos off my camera and post them here. I have a great one of the bride being walked down the grassy �aisle� by her dad, and he looks so proud he�s fit to burst.

Sadly I don�t have it with me, so no wedding photos for now.

I do have a photo of myself, though. Not much of a substitute but I�m posting it anyway. It was taken at an old castle in Ljubljana last month, where there was this free-standing kiosk that let you email virtual postcards to people for free. You could either use one of their standard pictures, or you could have it take a picture of your head as you stood there looking like a tourist, with your ruddy cheeks and bad hair (it was cold and windy). I opted for the latter. I tried a few with me looking directly at the camera, but I looked startled in each one for some reason, so in the end I gave up and decided to do the standard �artsy� thing and look just off-camera. This is how the photo turned out:

I haven�t yet decided whether this photo makes me look bad.

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By the way, hi to you Googlers in Ireland, Italy and Canada! Someone in Canada found my journal by searching for �Daniel�s banana bread�, which impressed me. I�m going to have to tell Daniel his cakes are famous. Feel free to drop me a line, whoever you are� I�m curious :)