Ferocity Mill

Hey guys! I got married three weeks ago! To Eric! Woo hoo! That’s part of what’s been keeping me away from this blog. The second part is school applications, and the third part is Facebook. I don’t think I need to explain much further than that. The important thing is, I’m here now.

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The wedding was as perfect as I could have imagined it being. We held it on our friends’ ranch in Santa Cruz, and let me tell you, if you’ve never gotten your West Coast hippie friends together with your East Coast Christian family members, you’re missing out. (Surprise! they all get along quite well.) It would take me about as long to write about the whole thing as it’s taken me to actually complete an entry here, so instead I’d like to share a few favorite moments.

- On the morning of the wedding, Eric got his men friends together for a chest-beating breakfast before the ceremony. I got my ladies together about forty-five minutes later. The men’s plan was to have breakfast, then walk up to the ridge (the whole property is on a huge hill, from the top of which you can see the ocean and the mountains) and have a testosterone-y send-off for Eric. The ladies’ plan was to gather several bottles of champagne and citrus mixer, then walk up to the ridge and drink mimosas. Unlike the men, we didn’t think to plan for food (who needs it, when you’ve got mimosas!). Luckily, as were were passing the site of the men’s breakfast, we discovered that two of the men had stayed behind to clean up. Like true gentlemen, they cooked us a delicious spread with all the extra food they’d brought. Completely un-ironically, it was mainly sausages.

- We decided to have the dog be the ringbearer. That kind of thing works out splendidly when the temperature is cracking 100 degrees, the ceremony is next to a coi pond, and the dog is a lab. Disaster was narrowly averted. The best part of this is that in the video of the ceremony, you can’t see the dog making a beeline for the pond. I say, “Come here, Bones!” and then there is, shall we say, a commotion, off-camera. We plan to let those who weren’t there draw their own conclusions.

- Eric and I wrote a song together and sang it during our ceremony, and I didn’t fuck it up. Booyah.

- Because we didn’t have a limitless budget, we stocked our bar with only wine, beer and champagne. Because our friends are wonderful, they set up a second bar, stocked with only a hookah, high-grade tequila and margarita mix. Thus, we had a lot of extra wine, which is never a bad thing.

- My dad and brother played harmonica and guitar, respectively, with our wedding band, a string band from Portland called Fruition (check them out! I will send you a CD if you want!) for a cover of Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “Pride and Joy.” Then Eric’s friend beatboxed with them for a cover of Blackstreet’s “No Diggity.” Both songs were met with massive approval by our guests, all of whom had by then discovered the margarita bar.

- Rather than asking any specific people to make toasts or speeches, we invited anybody who felt so inclined to step up and say a few words. Our housemate, whose pseudonym will be P-dizzle, is a performance poet who competes in poetry slams nationwide. He performed an amazing poem that he had written for us, completely unsolicited. Then my cousin got up and told everyone about how, when I was eight, I dressed up like a mermaid and sang “Part of Your World” from Disney’s The Little Mermaid for our whole family. “It’s on video!” she made sure to mention. Luckily, it’s hard to get embarrassed when you’ve been drinking champagne for three hours.

- A friend in Wyoming sent us twenty pounds of elk meat for our dinner, which was barbecued shish-kebabs. I repeat: twenty pounds of elk meat. That she and her family had personally killed. I can’t really think of a bloodier wedding present. It was delicious.

- One of my oldest friends is an artist who works in all sorts of media. Most recently, he had been doing airbrush stencils on people’s skin at Burning Man and other music and art festivals. He brought his airbrushing supplies to the wedding, and painted anyone who so desired. By the end of the night, at least half of the people were painted – and not just the hippies. And let me tell you, friends – once you’ve seen your conservative aunt from Buffalo with flowers and the word “gratitude” airbrushed down her arm, dancing to string band music alongside your friends from Northern California who grow medical marijuana as their primary source of income … well, that’s when you know you’re doing something right.

Here are a few photos from the day:

Yay, love!