Getting hitched with a little help from our friends
   
    Honestly, I wasn’t sure we were going to pull it off. But we did, thanks to a lot of help from our friends and family. We planned all along that or wedding would be a modest affair. A small circle of friends and family, an austere service, a low-key reception. We had heard stories of those who had begun with similar intentions only to end up with affairs Jay Gatsby would find over the top. It starts out innocently enough, “You’re not inviting so-and-so? But they invited you to their wedding,” or “if your inviting Joe, you must invite Sue.” Before you know it you’re making small talk with your cousin’s niece’s fiancé’s widow who keeps calling you by the wrong name.
    That wasn’t going to happen to us. We made a list of the people we really, really wanted to be there and that is who got invitations. That’s not to say the process was entirely painless. I still keep in contact with a rather large clique from my college days. I chose not to invite any of them. I figured I was doing them a favor – do any of those guys really want to come to Maine in December for a night comprising a 40-minute church service, dinner and a cash bar?
    We had planned a modest affair, but like I said, we couldn’t have done it without our family and friends. Our parents generously contributed money to the effort, so generously in fact that we were able to set aside some to start our nest egg. But even their generosity would not have been enough had it not been for others helping out in ways big and small.
    In what I have been calling Kari’s stroke of brilliance, we decided to for go the tradition of having the rehearsal dinner with family members and the wedding party at a restaurant. Instead we had a family dinner at our apartment. It was the first time the two sides of the family would meet and Kari wanted to ensure that the atmosphere was familial. She feared, with good reason I think, that at a restaurant there’s little opportunity to mingle: people end up talking to the person seated next to them for two hours.
    It was a good plan, but without the help of Kari’s sister Betty and her Cousin Amy, who volunteered to shop and prepare the meal, we could not have done it.
    Up until they arrived for the dinner I think my family was pretty skeptical of the rehearsal family dinner concept. But as strangers sat next to strangers with plates of food in their laps and ceased being strangers and Walt padded between clumps of people and kids squealed as uncles grabbed and tickled it seemed strange that people did it any other way.
    As his present, our friend John designed our invitations, creating an original drawing that we plan to frame. I don’t know how much wedding invitations are supposed to cost, but I’m pretty sure in addition to giving us a priceless memento, he saved us hundreds.
    Holly, who can command a hefty fee as a professional photographer, would have been at our wedding regardless, but as a present to us, brought along her camera not just for the ceremony but to document the intimate moments of preparation.
    Instead of a deejay, we burned our own mix of songs and played them over a P.A. system Kari borrowed from work. We must have done a good job, because more than one person has asked for a copy of the CD.
    In ways big and small our friends and family helped to make our wedding a fun, beautiful, romantic, memorable experience. Kari and I can take credit for coming up with a good plan, but without them, it would never have become a reality.