An auspicious wedding

[Obviously, this has nothing to do with the renovation efforts, but since it took place on the farm, I think it is fair game.]

The weekend began with a bang, literally: My tire blew out on the way to the airport. (On the freeway, in the fast lane, no less.) It's been about ten years since I had to change a tire but, in spite of drivers honking at me for no apparent reason, I got it done in about 20 minutes. It didn't matter, though: I had already missed my flight and the next flight (which was the last of the evening) was sold out.

They put me on standby and, miraculously, I got a seat. I was able to catch my connecting flight and arrived in Harrisburg, a little harried, at 10am, as scheduled. As we loaded the luggage in the car, Dawn said she needed new tires. I told her not to talk to me about tires.

The weather report had been waffling all week -- and I don't mean partly cloudy vs. mostly sunny, I mean sunny and warm vs. monsoon. Unfortunately, monsoon won, and I arrived in a torrential downpour that would not let up. Lancaster gets a lot of rain, and everybody said this was a lot of rain even for them!

My mother had arrived two days earlier, and my brother the night before, and so even though I knew I'd be dead tired, I'd made reservations to take them to Cornwall Iron Furnace, so they could get an idea of what went on here in the 18th century. They all blew me off. So after some venting, Dawn and I just went by ourselves, in the rain. (We met an old friend there.) It's a great tour and I highly recommend it.

That evening, we went to the Plain & Fancy farm, which offers one-stop buggy rides, Amish information, and food. The buggy rides were called for weather, we just missed the Amish film, and our friends from San Diego got lost, in the rain. But finally we all got together and had a great meal.

The next day, the rain got worse. Dawn had to get up at 4am and use a bucket to empty a trench before the water flowed into the basement. (I slept through the whole thing.) Later, 15 people showed up for breakfast, only to be told the computer had crashed and lost all the reservations! It took half an hour to get seated.

That afternoon, we unleashed the group on Lititz, an historic little town near the farm. That day happened to be the annual "chocolate walk," which seems to be modeled after Halloween -- you go door to door and get chocolate, except its for adults and you don't have to be in costume. One of our friends is in the retail business and he marvelled at the idea of getting people to pay $10 for the privilege of walking through your store to get a small piece of candy! Despite the rain, all the stores were packed.

That evening, we drove to Christiana to see "Amish Vows in Paradise" at the Freedom Chapel Dinner Theatre, a restored Presbyterian church from the 1850s (that may have been involved in the Underground Railroad). I thought a play about marriage would be appropriate, but when I called to make the reservations, Dolly (the owner and playwright) said the theatre would be dark that night. I hadn't expected that, and didn't have a backup plan. When I whined that I had a large group coming just for that weekend, she took pity on me and agreed to open! (Apparently she was trying to schedule some vacation.) Which made me feel even worse when we arrived 45 minutes late, due to the rain. (My sister flew in that day, and it took her four and half hours to drive from Baltimore, a trip that usually takes 90 minutes.)

So with all of these disasters in hand, we were prepared for the worst on Sunday...and it never came. The rain stopped, everyone arrived on time, we found the license and the rings, we exchanged vows without either of us running away (although I could swear Dawn called me a jerk), the photographer/caterer did a great job on both, the moms handled the entire reception, and everyone had a good time. That was really all we wanted.

Note: Dawn wanted to write her own vows, but I was afraid she would say something along the lines of "One ring to rule them all" so I let the minister write the vows, and they were lovely.

There were a couple of flubs, all mine: I had brought two outdoor speakers for the music, but one broke when I arrived, so the music was pretty muffled. I had assembled a dozen "mix" CDs to distribute to the guests, only to forget and then lose them (I later found them in a bag of chocolate in the refrigerator--don't ask). And I lost my speech, so in the embarassment of the moment I completely forgot to thank our guests, our moms, and most importantly remember our dads. I'm very sorry for that.

One last story: When I was tasked with the music, I just went through all of our CDs and copied everything that sounded good onto an MP3 CD. I then sent these 300-odd songs to Dawn, asking her to review them and let me know which to keep. Three months later and with no edit in sight, I forced the issue on my last trip, and Dawn listened to the music in the car as we drove between appointments. Unfortunately, going through all of our CDs didn't leave me much time to review each song, and so many of the songs that sounded like love songs ("Touch Me In The Morning," "I Honestly Love You," to name two) were actually about breaking up, loving someone else, or even death! As Dawn listened to these songs, she just looked at me in abject horror. On the bright side, at least I was there to defend myself--imagine what would have happened if she'd listened to these songs by herself!

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