I suppose you’ve probably had enough of the Anticipation and are probably ready to move on to The Main Course, right? Chris and I are back from our post-wedding travel adventure (a.k.a. “honeymoon”, but I’m getting tired of that word), so I figured it’s now time for a blog makeover (thanks for the shoe picture, Tyleen! it’s getting a lot of mileage, including being used as my facebook profile picture) and a new post. So here you go.

If you’re reading this, it is likely that you were at the wedding. But just in case you weren’t, I’ll fill you in. Unfortunately, I don’t have a huge number of pictures yet – I didn’t take any, and I’m still waiting from some pictures from family and our professional photographer. But I’ll share what I have here.

The day started where I left off from the previous day (duh, right?). Mom and I went to pick up the cake, which, unfortunately, was not exactly what I wanted even after providing elaborate instructions to the baker. In all fairness, my original baker canceled at the last minute and the new baker did her best…but I’m still debating whether or not to send pictures in to Cake Wrecks. And, not that I’m any kind of bridezilla or anything (I really don’t like to even characterize my role in the day as “bride”, I just hate the way it sounds), for the sake of full disclosure, I did have a minor hair freak-out. Because I had gotten my hair fabulously straightened the day before, it was a little too slick and didn’t have any volume for putting it up the way I wanted…what originally was to be a couple of large, loose, Princess-Leiaish buns looked more like two small snail shells that further emphasized the largishness of my head and flatness of face, instead of delicately de-emphasizing these tragic features and flattering my head in its entirety. Unfortunately, I had no back-up plan, so I had to just wear my hair half up and half down, with little bits sticking up in the back and generally looking retarded. Looking back on it, I really wish I had just tried a bit harder to wear my hair up, dang it! What was I thinking??? Oh well – I’ll end my rant here. At least I didn’t have any excessively gigantic zits growing out of my nose or anything (and if I did, I would’ve had plenty of bindis to cover it up).

Chris and I went to the Vintage Plaza Hotel in downtown Portland where we met up with our photographer and got ready for the wedding. We reserved a fantastic suite there, which came with champagne for us with which we pre-funked in preparation for the evening. After taking a bunch of photos (and yes, some of them actually show my dress), we hired a town car to take us to Caruthers Landing, on the Willamette River, just south of OMSI. Everyone met us there, largely on time, and looked fabulous! More picture taking ensued.

At 6 pm we boarded the Columbia Gorge Sternwheeler, a river paddleboat. The weather actually held out – it has been an extremely wet spring (and winter, and fall, for that matter), but the rain gods had apparently decided we’d had enough, or maybe they just wanted to watch the ceremony and wouldn’t have been able to see through the clouds otherwise. In any case, we only got a few sprinkles of rain, but it was actually fairly clear, if not cold (what did you expect, Koski? It’s mid-March in Portland, duh!).

Chris and I decided on a very small wedding – partially to keep the cost down (and it was spendy enough, my goodness!), partially to keep it nice and intimate, and mainly so that it wouldn’t spiral out of control and become a gigantic wedathon with all manner of matrimonial nonsense: man-and-wife-this, remove-the-garter-with-his-teeth-that. Don’t get me wrong – it’s ok if that’s your thing, it’s just not mine (um, I mean Ours. Yes, Ours, ahem!). So, we only had our immediate family in attendance – mainly parents and siblings, about 20 folks in all. This also made it so that everyone could actually fit on the bow of the boat so that we could get married outside (standing room only). We asked Chris’ long-time friend to perform our ceremony for us, so he got Internet-ordained lickety-split like and, after a couple of readings from our mothers, declared us Chris and Marci, husband and wife, partners in crime, accomplices of sorts.

Once our ceremony was over (what, 15 minutes or so?), we ran inside (dang, it was colder than we thought it would be) to warm up over appetizers. Did I mention this was a dinner cruise? Oh yes! A wedding and dinner all in one place – just to make things extra easy. It was a public cruise, so several more people came on board for dinner, but really, there weren’t very many people – just one deck was filled. Dinner was actually pretty good – I think I had salmon ravioli. We had a few small nieces and nephews running around, and I must say, they behaved amazingly well. I was thinking it might get too late for them, but they all played together just fine and I think they had a good time. Whew!

During dinner, the boat cruised up and down the Willamette River, down to the falls, then up again. In the summer, the boat cruises on the Columbia River, but sticks close to Portland in the colder months. A bunch of us went up to the wheel house, and the captain let me steer the boat. And I didn’t wreck it! Actually, I think Abby (Chris’ 4 year old niece) did a better job at steering than I did, but I also got to blast the horn. It was pretty loud. I think it made a few fish lose the contents of their lower digestive tracts.

One of the things the dinner cruise did not have was music, or dancing. I was a little bummed out about this, but figured that it was just one of those trade-offs for having a quirky venue. But it was ok, because Chris is amazing and I married the right guy. We had our moment, just the two of us, after we left the wheel house. We went back inside the boat on the upper deck, where there were no guests. Out of the blue, I heard Anya Marina’s “Vertigo” playing (the same song Chris played when he asked me to marry him)…I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from at first…and Chris hugged me and said it was time for our first dance. He had the song playing on his iPhone from his suit pocket. So we danced, just the two of us alone, and our photographer snapping flashy pictures. Awwwww!!!

Meanwhile, downstairs on deck 1, the party was in full swing. Of course, they waited for me and Chris to return so that we could have a champagne toast (my brother Paul made an excellent toaster, but I will say that he can have his winnings when it comes to kids. We will be victorious when it comes to cats!). And we cut into our cake, which had, miraculously survived the constant scrutiny of 3 small children for at least two hours. I think I had one bite of it and made the determination that I’m not particularly a fan of fondant, nor does it go particularly well with banana cake. Bleck!

At any rate, that was about it. I was thankful for so many things that day. I was grateful for the love and support my mom gave me during her visit from San Diego. I was happy that my dad and stepmom made it out from St. Louis – I know that family stuff like this is important to them. I was touched that Tyleen, Brett, Paul, and Anne traveled from near and far for the occasion – I know it was a short visit, but meaningful nonetheless. I was honored that Steve performed our ceremony, even though it took him out of his comfort zone. And I am thrilled that I have new family members – Chris’ parents, grandmother, brother and sister-in-law. Most of all, I am relieved that I have lots of little nephews and nieces who love their Auntie Marci and Uncle Chris and their five adorable kitties sooooo much…perhaps our decision not to have kids won’t bite us in the ass after all!!!

As I mentioned at the beginning, I don’t have many pictures of the event (yet – we’ll get our professional photos back soon, I hope). I took the best of what everyone gave me and made an album which you can see by clicking here.

Can I wrap this up now? Thank you! Acts 3 and 4 won’t be quite as long, I promise.