This weekend we completed a whirlwind tour of Lawrence, Kansas to watch Tim's younger cousin Daniel get married. This means we are very old, because when Tim and I got married, Daniel was only a little bit older than my children are now, and his six year old sister was our flower girl.
They asked for no pictures during the ceremony (which is a trend I personally love - no one wants to invite people to share in their big day and then look back to just see a bunch of iPhones held up over the faces of their loved ones... plus the pictures are always 100 times worse than the shot the professional photographer just took) so here is a picture of the space beforehand, with some of the 1,000 cranes that were folded, hot glued onto fishing line and strung throughout the venue. It was such a simple, but gorgeous ceremony.
It was so sweet and sincere and hopeful, watching these two beautiful kids stand in the late afternoon sunlight and pledge to be each other's favorite person forever. Having been a child bride myself, I am partial to people who get married before they're old enough to rent a car. And it felt doubly nice thinking about Gigi and Grizz celebrating their 40th anniversary on Sunday (talk about children getting married!) and watching Mimi and Pa take down all of the other dancers during the anniversary dance, as they are weeks away from celebrating 45 years together.
Also I made Tim and Jake wear matching outfits, and explained to Don and Evan the phenomenon of how great an exposed forearm looks on a man in a dress shirt.
I found Lawrence to be a charming little college town, and all of the green made me wish it was time for summer vacation in Wisconsin. We had a lot of good meals, and plenty of good cocktails. Amanda (the bride) recommended a bar called John Brown Underground, and described it as a "grad student bar." I think she may have meant hipster, because there was a lot of craft cocktailing, including jars and vats of infused liquors at work. I especially enjoyed that all of the labels including quotes around the words - that's how you know it's a quality product, and not just grain alcohol with rotting pine needles inside.
Here you can vaguely see that Jake is drinking something out of a Coke bottle, in a tub of ice.
Most of the group did an escape room on Saturday before the wedding, but my personal version of an escape room is closing the latch on an air conditioned hotel room and becoming a zombie in hotel sheets. I also did some poking around the little downtown shops, doing some retail therapy. On Friday when we got in I made Tim go to the antique mall with me - didn't buy anything, but he enjoyed visiting some old friends.
And Gigi and Grizz, like the saints they are, took the kids from dinner time on Thursday (the even brought them on their hot date!) until we arrived at about 5pm on Sunday, their 40th wedding anniversary. Just in time to send them off to their anniversary dinner, and Grizz's regularly scheduled 8:30pm bedtime.
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