Sa., 3/29

This is the third part in a series of posts to recount our time attending Uncle Bill and Aunt Dani's wedding in Philadelphia, and travels to and from there. I'm sparing you most of the details:

The big day. Uncle Bill and Aunt Dani get married. They were engaged for, if memory serves, approximately 19 months. Put another way, they got engaged before Ellie was conceived. If this sounds critical, it's not meant to be - EM and I were engaged nearly as long - I'm just pointing out how it relates to Ellie. That is, while they weren't married, Dani was still Aunt Dani in Ellie's world.

The day started out with breakfast and friends, again. After that there was a lot of waiting around at the hotel as the wedding was scheduled for 6:30; but, as part of the wedding party, we had to be at the Knowlton Mansion by 4. During the wait, we started discussing the pros and cons of leaving Sunday as opposed to our original departure date - when we were flying - of Monday. Uncle Bill came by the hotel around lunch time with food for everyone. All in all, Ellie did well throughout and the day was nicely uneventful - the way it should be, in my opinion.

When we arrived at the mansion, Uncle Bill and Aunt Dani were already taking pictures. The rest of the wedding party was there along with some family to help watch Ellie. All the picture taking went fine and everyone looked wonderful and before we knew it the ceremony was ready to begin.

We had a babysitter lined up to watch Ellie - so as not to interrupt the ceremony and in light of the fact that the reception would last well past her bedtime - in one of the upstairs rooms at the mansion, so we handed our darling baby off to her (Ellie's first hired sitter). The ceremony was short and sweet and the officiant did a wonderful job of making the vows personally relevant by incorporating their avocations - something to do with him being an engineer and her an architect and, therefore, they know that a relationship, like a structure, must have a sound foundation, etc.

After the "I do's" there was a cocktail hour so EM and I went to check on Ellie and she was crying her eyes out. We calmed her down and then went downstairs so that everyone could lavish attention on her. After cocktails, the wedding party was introduced. We had Ellie with us for that part of the reception as well as the first song or two. In fact, Ellie fell asleep on one of our shoulders as the band played away - pretty remarkable, if you ask me. So I took the angel upstairs to put her down for the night.

Well, somewhere between the reception and the room she woke up, and I could not get her back to sleep. I tried and I tried, but there were too many distractions. EM checked on us, and eventually took over without success. From there I think it's safe to say we were both a bit on edge, which made it difficult to fully enjoy the rest of the reception - the food was good, the band was good, the company was good, the cake was good, but our little Boo was on our minds. Fortunately, at some point, Grandpa took over and Ellie was able to get back to sleep. I just hope our problems with Ellie didn't impact the bride and groom (no word yet as they are still honeymooning).

I guess given our problems, I'd have to say that the evening thankfully came to an end around 11:30. We thanked, and paid, the sitter for the roughly five hours she was there even though we did the heavy lifting and were with our daughter much of that time (I know, our choice not hers), and we went back to the hotel. I seem to recall Ellie woke up when we got back to the room and there was some trouble getting her back down, but it's too fuzzy now for me to say with certainty. The bigger point is, we mostly survived the big day, and our thoughts could now turn to the trip back home.

-ED

PS - I don't know why, but I can't get Grandpa's pics to show up any larger than what you see here. Sorry.