Give It Love

Last week I had a pretty bizarre experience...I was able to live through Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010...TWICE. I literally left for my airport shuttle at 9:30 am from St. Kilda, Melbourne and arrived to the (not so friendly and a bit smelly) LA airport halfway across the world at 9:30 Am the same morning. The concept of time traveling sounds pretty cool, but by the time I spent 5 days celebrating Meg's wedding and then had to skip November 8th on my return trip back to Australia...I was pretty exhausted! Granted, I also didn't have my best friend sitting next to me with 4 glasses of champagne - instead I was scrunched between two fairly large business men right next to the lavatories in the back of economy seating. (What happened to the nice concept of bumping up attractive and lonely looking 23 yr old girls to first class?!) Even with the exhaustion and sheer confusion on what day/time it was for about a week....traveling back and forth across the world in this short amount of time was more than worth it. Not only do I now feel more like a worldly traveler, I got to witness a dream event....Meg and Matt's wedding :)

Meg's destination wedding in Philadelphia was truly amazing. I seriously feel sorry for anyone getting married this year....sorry, but I don't know how you're going to top this one off! It started off a little rough for me on Wednesday, as I fell asleep in the midst of counting 200 wedding biscotti for Meg and she called me a walking zombie. BUT after a few glasses of wine and the rest of my family/friends arrived I was alive and ready to go! Even the "stressful" preparations were fun...acting like assembly line workers with my mom, Mrs. Dobek and Mo Hurley will always stick out in my memory. The wedding day perfect - my sister looked breathtaking in her long lace gown and wedding veil, the ceremony was something from "The Sound of Music", bridal party pictures up the Rocky Steps were hilarious, cocktail hour in a science exhibit couldn't be MORE like Meghan and finally ending the day with a party in the great hall of the Franklin Institute could only be described as "class".

Much more than the main event, it's the little moments that we remember the most. Kelley and Jake's wedding was over 5 years ago and we still talk about my mom dancing in the basement of the church and almost knocking down the Crucifix with a bottle of champagne, laugh about Steven Dobek (the best man) found trying to take a swim at 5am and poke fun of my drunken Advent calender incident. Luckily, I didn't find myself wiping out on the dance floor this time around! Moments from this past week that will always stick out in my memory:

• Driving around the city with my sisters and laughing until we cry about some inside jokes
• Mace's pub! Of course, in all the places in Philadelphia my family goes to the hole-in-the-wall Irish pub around the corner from the hotel 3 nights in a row
• Girls dinner with Mo and Mrs. Dobek at The Continental...as Meg put it - "I think that was the first dinner we ever had with absolutely NO drama!"
• The wedding director at rehearsal. "Ummmm so what do you want the ushers to do??" Meg's response - "To usher people...?" I give Meg a lot of credit for remaining calm at this lady who clearly wasn't right in the head.
• Chasing after the trolley after the rehearsal dinner and Kel thinking it was funny to leave me behind.
• Wardrobe malfunctions....at least we had Mrs. Reed, phew
• My Dad walking Meg down the isle....Matt's reaction
• FREEZING during bridal pictures and the group of Asians snapping a million photos of us
• Dancing all night long to the live band and looking up at the enormous Benjamin Franklin statue...."beer is God's way of telling us he loves us"
• Finding myself getting the number of the gay florist couple so we can hang out the next time I visit Cape Cod
• After party (Mace's pub...of course) and somehow ending up with Katie and Amy Davis, my cousin Tommy, the best man and my Mom at 4:30 Am getting calzones delivered to the 22nd floor of our hotel.....how we pulled that one off - I have no idea

My dad couldn't have put it in better words:

"Life is a sensory overload as we try to manage the present, remember the past and plan for the future. A few events in life occur only once. Some events occur rarely, some yearly and some events frequently. This wedding was one of the rare moments when life stood still for a few seconds. It provided for a reflection of ourselves and of our visions for those who come after us. It was a renewel of our life's most important gifts, our future life and present family."