And after Friday came Saturday. Waking up to an alarm Saturday morning is never any fun. I left for oidhche's house about 9, and Christina called while I was on my way to let me know I didn't need to pick her up. This gave me an extra 20 minutes or so to play with, and I was happy. After failing to find a parking space at Dunkin Donuts (parking at DD is always bad, but the one in New Providence is one of the worst), I reached oidhche's house. palingyuan looked at a map with me and showed me the better way to get to the church, while turtle_morn's husband N finished getting ready. turtle_morn was pretty comfortable with the directions, and two cars seemed like a good idea after the events of the previous night.

oidhche and I made another, more successful trip to DD, and then arrived at the church at five of eleven. turtle_morn and N were about ten minutes behind her. And much decorating ensued. Christina was surprised at how quickly it all went, but with all our hands plus varied sets of experience it wasn't too bad. I should mention here that Christina has very much my personality type, as best I could tell, and was responsible for making sure something very important with lots of details was exactly right. Everyone who knows me can probably now imagine exactly how she sounded... fortunately, at this point I know myself and my own flaws well enough to recognize it in her, and anyone who can put up with me is used to it.

By a little after 12, the whole thing was done. That was about what I had expected, actually. And since the schedule called for pictures to begin at 1, it was decent timing. oidhche, turtle_morn, and N stayed at the church for finishing details and to keep someone there, with a run to QuickChek for food (I assume). oidhche also got to learn the sound system at the last minute, since it was a little unclear who was going to be recording the ceremony. I drove Christina back to the hotel. We ate there (Julie had provided a buffet for everyone involved), helped Julie clean up, ran up to Kyndle's room to ask her and Becka a couple of questions, and then generally made ourselves useful in the lobby coordinating things. Everyone was running late, of course - the bride finally left for pictures about the time the groom was supposed to be leaving... I kind of wish I'd been at the church to see the silliness that must have gone on with blindfolds and the like.

Once everyone else had gotten away from the hotel, Christina and I got ready and then headed back to the church ourselves. I was quite pleasantly surprised to discover that Kyndle had gotten corsages for the four of us who were designated as personal slaves assistants. Once we lit the candles, it was time to relax and enjoy the ceremony. It was relatively short and sweet. It had been quite some time since I'd been to a wedding without any Jewish traditions...

I am so delighted to see Kyndle and Graham married that I cannot find adequate words. It is wonderful to see Kyndle so happy with her life, given how poor an experience Drew was for her. And it is always a pleasure to see a dear friend find someone who complements them perfectly, especially when that person is someone who becomes a friend as well. Kyndle and Graham belong together, and their joy in each other enriches the world.

I bolted for the back room the second the recessional was over. One of the pew candles had burned down WAY too fast and was going to create a horrible mess any second. Christina ran in just as I'd gotten the snuffer out of its package, and I handed it off to her. And thus we began reversing the process, taking down all the decorations and getting everything cleaned and put away. I drafted soupkills as an addition to the army of hands, since he was following us around anyway. It wasn't too bad, except that one of the glass sheaths for the pew candle holders practically fell apart in oidhche's hands while he was trying to clean it. Of course, the cars we needed to load everything into had left by the time we were ready to load cars. However, since we had three cars (and it was a good thing I'd drafted soupkills!) it all worked out. We drove everything to the reception hall, Christina collected keys to the cars we needed, and we unloaded and reloaded.

The reception itself was decent. I wasn't too impressed by the food, but the hall was gorgeous and the service was pretty good. johnstevensaul and ladyaphrodite were up dancing for just about everything except the love songs, when they'd sit down and turtle_morn and N would get up and dance. Meanwhile, oidhche, soupkills, caniswolfie and I formed a solid wall of non-dancing for most of the night. A lot of the music was not really the kind of thing singles can dance to anyway. And our table may well have had the highest concentration of single people. It was certainly one of the younger tables - it's entirely likely that ladyaphrodite was the youngest person at the wedding. However, soupkills and turtle_morn had opposing Hershey's Kiss armies at war with each other. Some of the siege equipment built was rather imaginative. Toward the end of the evening, when people were starting to leave, there was finally some music that could be danced to without lessons or an SO, and I got to get up and move around a bit. And I'd like to thank both oidhche (who was technically my date) and soupkills (who wasn't) for being such charming wonderful people, both during the setup/cleanup stages and during the reception. I had a wonderful evening and you guys made it easier and more fun in general.

All that stuff we'd loaded into the family cars? Turns out some of it was in the wrong cars. And there needed to be more space for some of the stuff from the reception. Yep, time for another running trip through the parking lot. Followed by another one to retrieve Kyndle's luggage, which was by now buried under everything else. At this point Christina and I moved the two remaining family cars from the back of the parking lot to the front to save running. There really wasn't much cleanup to do, but there was enough craziness and confusion that it was about an hour after the reception before I was sure there was nothing else for me to do.

Kyndle and her parents and other assorted relatives must have thanked me a dozen times, and I'm sure everyone else was getting thanked as well. I just kept telling them, that's what friends are for. I know that if I ever really needed help with something Kyndle could do, she'd be glad to do it for me. And weddings are generally one of the most important days of someone's life. It's so worth the time and effort for me to do whatever I can to make it easier and better.

I was sore for two days afterwards from the climbing and running and dancing and generally ignoring my limitations. I need to do this kind of thing more often.