Can you guess where our first wedding of the 2010 Memorial Day Weekend was?
Heather and I drove to Kansas City Friday night, and then carpooled with her parents down to St Luis for the wedding of a family friend. It worked out really well to be able to team drive that leg of the trip. Being able to spend that much more time with our new nephew, during the car ride, was certainly another advantage from Heather’s point of view. The wedding itself was… elegant I think is the best word, the chapel on the Washington University campus, in keeping with the rest of the campus, is just beautiful. Even the newer buildings are designed to project a sort of old stone aesthetic. I suppose I should talk about the actual wedding but I really never know what to say…
We did discover that I don’t remember portions of my own wedding. Heather didn’t find it amusing that I couldn’t remember if we had done unity candles in ours or not. In my opinion there are more memories generated from that day than in most months, so I think I should get some slack when it comes to candles.
So back to the wedding, there was a large block of time between when the wedding ended and the reception began. Large enough we decided we could go back to the hotel, change, and catch the train down to the arch. I can without hesitation say that the arch was the highlight of St Luis for me. I think Heather might be more inclined to mention Holden (The nephew in question… can’t remember if I have used his name before, I was going to leave it out but it’s just cumbersome to leave out all other names). I don’t know if he would feel the same way though. Once I get some time to edit together some more video I can demonstrate in a much more visual way his reactions, but for now lets just say he isn’t sold on the Aunt Heather idea quite yet.
The next day we loaded early up and drove back Kansas City. Being able to do a sort of layover in KC was a lifesaver to try and breakup the drive. Heather took full advantage of the situation, both taking a nap on the drive, and a nap at the house. It had been a kind of late night the night before, so I took advantage of the napping opportunity too!
Then it was on to Lincoln, where my cousin Josh was getting married. They had opted for a very small wedding, and then invited everyone to the reception, so we didn’t actually go to that wedding. The reception was really fun though. Heather and I have been married for well over a year now, and it was the first time she got to meet a number of the cousins on my Dad’s side. I have to admit that I get a little overwhelmed in situations like that. You really want to seize the opportunity to talk to all these people that you haven’t seen in years, but there are so many of them, and then add in the fact I want to make sure and introduce my wife to everyone… and well I think we did ok, but I wish we could have talked to everyone a little more. A quick note about the venue: The reception was held at a country club that had two noteworthy attributes. One, it was really cool. They had done a rather good job of the giant lodge build, I guess you could say it was sort of rustic and classy all at the same time. We will pretend not to notice the fact that we were not anywhere near where trees like they used grow, nor does Lincoln have native stone like they were using. 😉 The second point is that it was the lodge for the home course of the UNL golf team, something that featured prominently in Heather’s life shortly before she met me. It was fun to get to see a place that she had spent so much time!
We stayed as late as we possibly could at the reception, but had to leave before we were completely wiped out as we were spending the night with Heather’s aunt Amy in Omaha. We rolled in a little after midnight, actually beating her home as they were off doing some baseball tournament in KC that day, crawled into bed and passed out. The next morning we awoke to the smell of bacon! Amy had mentioned something about doing a pancake breakfast, but neither Heather nor I had thought about it much. When we walked downstairs Amy was nearly done frying what must have been ten pounds of bacon! After recovering from the initial shock, Heather spoke up to suggest that we probably weren’t going to eat that much bacon. It was at that point that we discovered we had inadvertently invited ourselves to a breakfast party. Apparently the graduation reception for Heather’s cousin Jarred had been in the AM, and breakfast themed. As is often the case with receptions, they had substantial leftovers. The solution Amy had was to invite about 30 people over for breakfast on Memorial Day! Heather and I certainly enjoyed getting bacon and pancakes for breakfast, as well as getting to spend a few minutes talking to so many people from the area.
Eventually we had to say our goodbyes, and headed back to Des Moines. We made it home in time to do a few loads of laundry and get ready for another week of work! (albeit a short week)
-Jordan
Sorry for the lack of pictures, I really had planned to stick a few more in, but I just ran out of time… this ended up being a substantial post even without embedding pictures! If you click on the picture at the top of this post, you should to to the gallery and be able to find a few more pictures from the trip!
Nelsons 