Levedy

The Wedding

So I made it. I had the dress, I had the church, I married the boy, and everyone had a good time.

n.b.- Men, you may want to skip ahead to the honeymoon post, since it mentions less girly stuff and more naked people.

Two days before the wedding, my parents did the most awesome thing possible for me: they helped me clean my house. That may not sound like much to you, but in the midst of finalizing wedding plans, I totally slacked on preparing the house for the Greek Invasion (Now with fewer Turks!) I was/am SO grateful that my parents helped me out on that one.

The day of the rehearsal was spent using as much gas in everyone’s automobile as possible. People needed to be picked up from the airport, brought to other people’s houses, stuff needed to be shuttled from one location to another, yadda yadda yadda.

My house was packed with Greeks. Dimitri’s Uncle and his family (and extended family) were staying at our house, making use of all spare rooms and floor space. Sophie’s house was packed with her father, his wife, and Sophie’s two sisters. The Bulgarians* were stashed away in some other house.

The Women (Dim’s aunt, my mother, and my aunt) descended on my house that morning to prepare the flowers. They tittered and giggled as I waxed Dimitri’s eyebrows. They made lovely bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres for anyone and everyone. I stayed out of their way as best as I could.

We were (of course) late to the church for the rehearsal. I called the church ahead of time and apologized, saying that we were on “Greek Time” and would be about 10 minutes late. Sophie, always wanting to make an entrance, was about 30 minutes late. Father John had time to run us through the procession twice before scooting us out of the church to do another rehearsal for another couple getting married after us.

After the rehearsal, we went to the reception hall to set up the centerpieces and favors and crap like that. I had figure that with everyone working together, we would have the place ready in 30 minutes. What ended up happening was ¾ of everyone sitting on their duffs and my family and Kat doing all the work, which ended up taking over an hour. The duff-sitters started to grumble about how hungry they were, and why were things taking so long?

I, wanting to remain graceful if it killed me, continued to smile and say “Soon!” and secretly wished indigestion on people.

The rehearsal dinner went well, and I was able to see my college friend Mary for the first time in years. Everyone liked the food, and Kat played nice sitting next to The Bulgarians.

Kat, Mary, and I took care of come last-minute preparations. Finally, at about one in the morning, I packed my things, and shoved off for my suite at the Orleans.

I couldn’t sleep, so I took a warm bath, thinking that would make me sleepy (it didn’t) and tried my best to shut my eyes. I finally gave up the effort at 7 am and got out of bed. I jumped in a shower (Yes, I had bathed four hours earlier.) and ordered room service, since I figured it would be the last substantial meal that I would eat until well after the reception (true!) Kat and Mary showed up with another breakfast and coffee, and we went about “getting ready.”

Now, I’m sure that Dimitri’s version of “getting ready” consisted of:
1)Shower
2)Wear clean boxers
3)Put on deodorant
4)Put on tux
5)Check fly

My version took many more steps, and was amazingly easy to accomplish, considering I was working on about three hours of sleep (thank you Starbucks!)

Kat commented quite rightly that I looked like one of those crocheted toilet paper holder dolls. The photographer took a picture of me in my dress trying to shove a roll onto my foot. Heh.

Millions of pictures later, the photographers left to go to the church to take pictures of Dim’s lot, and we waited for the limo to arrive.

We waited outside the Orleans at the limo staging area. And waited. And waited. No limo.

Luckily, Dimitri’s godparents just happened to be walking out of the hotel at that time. We flagged them over, explained the situation, and they drove us to the chapel. Nick drove very carefully, since I could get a seat belt on. This was the first of my sitting adventures, as trying to sit in a poufy dress takes more concentration than a moon launch.

We arrived at the church about twenty minutes early (Hah! Take THAT, Greek Standard Time) and I hung out in the cry room until instructed to line up with my dad for the procession. A few friends snuck back to say hello while I waited.

Athena had gathered a passel of her fellow choir majors to sing at the wedding. They sounded beautiful. My dad started to get a migraine from the stress. Me, I was a cool cookie. After ten years, I was ready to run up there and get married. I was the hottest woman in the church, and I was ready to be Mrs. Rodis.

The ceremony itself is rather boring. Lots of chanting to the effect of “these two are getting married like Joachim and Anna, like Rachel and Whoever, like Noah and his goat, yadda yadda...” There was a lot of “The bible says the man will leave the house of his mother and cleave unto his wife, and they will be family unto themselves” (I hope Sophie was listening hard to that part) There was lots of standing and sitting for the guests, and a whole lot of ring and crown swapping for us. The choir was lovely in its responses to Father John. Plenty of “Kyrie Eleisons” for everyone. I kept peeking over at Dim, and he kept winking back at me. I was having fun, standing up there and having 120 peoples’ eyes on my ass. I was looking at my husband to be, and brother, that was alllll-right.

Father John has to repeat a lot of stuff three times, so some of it he did in Greek and some of it he did in English. My baptismal name is Katherine, so during the Greek parts he referred to me as that. This mystified the gringos in the group, because my maid of honor’s name is Kathryn. The Utah people felt right at home with it, wink wink, nudge nudge.

Father John (Finally) let us kiss, and we said something funny (I don’t remember what) that had people giggling, and then we walked out to organ music.

Eight thousand posed pictures later, we were in the reception hall watching other people eat. I think I ate about ten bites of food the entire time. I was too busy visiting my guests. All told, I didn’t spend that much time with Dimitri, either. Sophie didn’t say a single word to me.

The reception included the essentials of any Greek/American wedding:
1) Greek circle dancing
2) Dancing to “Car Wash” and “Hey-Ya”
3) The embarrassing drunken man speech (provided aptly by Tom)
4) An uncountable number of empty Ouzo bottles
5) Drunken cousins who later barfed in Sophie’s and my driveways
6) Cutting the cake (Dim smeared some on my cheek and kissed it off)
7) Tossing the bouquet and flinging the garter
8) A limo ride down the strip while Dim and I tried to keep our eyes open from exhaustion

All in all, it was a very fun time. I will have pictures, for those who care. Until then, I’ll tide you over with this:

Next up: The honeymoon....

*Grozdan and Anna, parents of Sophie’s not-quite-former-and-not-quite-present paramour. They are very nice people, but speak no English and only passable Greek. The n.q.f.a.n.q.p. paramour could not get a visa to come to the states, so he remains in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. To futher prove the “Damn, this is a small world” statement, I invite you to visit Plovdiv’s official tourist site (Yes, it has one, lending credence to the “damn, the internet has everything, doesn’t it?” theory) you will find a picture of Bob Miller, Nevada’s former Governor.

Posted by Jen at March 17, 2005 3:49 PM