My brother Dave's wedding was on October 18th. Dave planned it all out in exactly the way you would expect an engineer to plan out a wedding; with spreadsheets and schedules outlining each task that needed to be done each day leading up to the wedding and then a carefully planned schedule for the wedding itself. It's kinda funny because he is the last person on earth to have any clue about weddings, but since he married a woman who is not familiar with U.S. weddings and who only arrived two months before the wedding, it was up to him to take care of most of the arrangements. Daphne did do a lot and put quite a bit of effort into the wedding preparation herself, though.
Lots of Daphne's Filipino family and friends arrived for the rehearsal the evening before and it was funny how they were all freezing to death when it was 48ยบ out that night. We got to meet her dad, Felix, as well as her grandparents (who were super cool) and several of her friends. Abby and Shelly were both there and they had both recently gotten engaged – Abby was engaged on the 12th, so we'll be flying down to Houston for that one next June and Shelly's wedding will be a week later up in the Twin Cities.
The wedding went well and actually was a lot of fun. I am usually not a fan of weddings at all, so if I say it was fun, you know it was fun. The groomsmen all wore traditional Filipino barongs (Dave bought them for us), which are way more comfortable than wearing a tux. The barong is a very thin lightweight shirt made from either banana or pineapple fibers and has some fancy twirlydinks all over it and is worn with a light cotton long sleeve undershirt. The history behind these things is that back in the day under Spanish rule, Filipino men had to wear these see-through shirts so that they could not conceal any weapons. Somehow this somewhat demeaning outfit was given a more positive meaning over time as it became the haute couture of Filipino weddings and is worn for many ceremonial occasions.
So yeah, the wedding was awesome and I played guitar at the reception and Cynthia sang. Near the beginning of the reception as people were arriving, my aunt Tammy accidentally set her napkin on top of a lit candle at her table (every table had four lit candles) which then set the top of the table on fire. Some of the decorations burned up and part of the tablecloth burned, but we got it out. Good times.
Yeah, this is a weird pose. The photographer was not the best at posing people... or setting the white balance on his camera.
I forgot my guitar strap.
Cynthia has been working hard on her Couch to 5K program and has been running every other day for about eight weeks. She ran the Costume Run with several of her friends and had a blast. It started at NewBo and ended on the stage at TCR, where they drew prizes and awarded the fastest runners and the people with the best costumes. Afterwards we all went out to grab a bite at White Star.
Next up... Halloween. We were a 20s flapper and a silent film villain. I made intertitle cards with responses for all the possible questions or interactions I might have at work and I pulled out a card when someone stopped by to talk. "Mark, when will you have that mockup ready?" I strike an appropriately sinister pose and pull out a card:
No one seemed to think it was as funny as I did, but that's their problem! "So... you'll have it ready soon?"
OK, so here's a tip if the lame tealight candles don't really cut it for ya (cuz they don't cut it for me). Take a roll of TP and soak it in kerosene. Then drop it into your pumpkin and light it. WHOOSH! Yeah, that's more like it.
Happy Halloween!
