Chapter 11: The Wedding

Thursday, October 26,  2006:  Will and I went our separate ways to different hotels around dinner time, and the friends who had already arrived helped me assemble the programs, threading the burgundy ribbon through the paper over snacks and wine in my hotel suite.  They helped me organize all the decorations I had brought and ran around picking up last-minute items; Will and I were on a budget and I had spent hours and hours picking out items on eBay, wedding-themed sites, and paper shops.  We had carefully planned a small wedding (in total, about 60 guests) and were thankful for the friends who could make it in person as well as those who were there for us in spirit.

Friday morning, we awoke to Texas-shaped waffles at the hotel and excited chatter among the friends and family who had already arrived.  My friend Eric injured his eye and had to spend the day of the wedding finding an ophthalmologist before the ceremony... it certainly made his trip to Austin memorable, if not quite as pleasurable.  Others spent the time sight-seeing or visiting the spa near the hotel, taking advantage of the day. 

Driving up highway 183 and across to the site, overlooking Lake Travis, the view took my breath away all over again.   I hadn't seen Villa Antonia in months, and it was as beautiful as I remembered.  In fact, it was a little cloudy and I worried about rain, but the rain plan was in place and I had to trust that everything was going to turn out fine.   As the preparations come together, the sun came out and it was absolutely fine October weather, if a little breezy.

I had purchased burgundy Gerbera daisies through a wholesale online flower shop, and they arrived looking fresh and ready for the reception, which was a relief.  Christine and Tonya went to work setting up the cornucopias along the aisle and the table setups, and I flitted around nervously, answering questions and feeling guilty but grateful that my friends were working so hard to help me with my big day.  Todd and Steve were in charge of the trellis decor, and Jennifer supervised, deciding that it looked more like it had been festooned with toilet paper- as if mischievous kids attacked it on Halloween night - instead of an elegant fabric drape, so they wrapped the sides instead.

My mom and one of my best friends, my cousin Kelley, helped me get ready.  My sister was in the bride room with us and had her hands full with her daughter Rachel, who was only six months old at the time.  Mom cinched the corset, Kelley helped me with makeup and my shoes, and we carefully - to keep our dresses from crumbs - snacked on fruit and pretzels as the guests arrived.

My oldest niece, Dana, and Will's niece Rebeckah, 8 and 7, were my flower girls and only attendants, and they were prancing around in their pink dresses like miniature princesses, floating on air.  I had given them matching lockets to wear and had their hair curled at the salon, and they were having the dress-up day of their young lives.

Looking over the balcony window before the ceremony, I laughed as I saw my friends Amber and Terri racing in, shoes in hand, after getting stuck in Friday afternoon traffic from the airport.  Then I saw the cellist on the back of the property golf cart, jumping off at the front gate and hastily setting up next to the other two-thirds of the string trio we had booked for the ceremony ten minutes before I was about to make my debut.

Without any nervousness or second-guessing, I carefully tread down the spiral staircase toward my handsome father, waiting to offer me an arm.  I noticed my friend Christina in the crowd and waved to her, looking around the small crowd at faces I loved.  I could see Will's face and his eyes were shining, proud and strong.  My dad turned me over to Will and he pulled me close to him, holding me tight during the ceremony instead of the traditional hand-holding; it felt right. 

I was lucky to have a few friends in the audience I have known since kindergarten, and Shannon Huneryager was one of them.  She lent her beautiful voice to us and played the guitar to Edwin McCain's "I Could Not Ask for More."

By this time, the wind was starting to pick up, and the gorgeous veil, which was my "something borrowed" from Tonya was whipping around my head.   

About halfway through the song, Will and I started to giggle about my veil tangling around us, and we couldn't stop.  Someone stepped out of the audience to straighten it out, and we stopped giggling long enough to finish our ceremony, which was beautifully conducted by Will's brother-in-law Sean, and Episcopalian priest, and my dad's brother Ed, an American Baptist pastor.  It was from this that I learned from my uncle Ed:  "Love is a verb.  It is an action you choose every day, not one you take for granted."  That part of our service will stick with me forever.

After we were pronounced Mr. and Mrs. Shaw, we took 10 or 15 minutes for photos, and joined our guests in the ballroom for prosecco and dinner and cake and dancing.  Will and I could not agree on cake, so we had two: lemon raspberry with buttercream, and flourless chocolate with chocolate ganache from Blue Note Bakery.  They were both incredibly delicious.  Each guest had a small bag of Texas-shaped gingerbread cookies from Sweetish Hill at his or her place setting, and the tables were named after places Will and I had traveled together:  Sedona, Grand Canyon, San Antonio Riverwalk, and so on.

My DJ had strict instructions on his Do Not Play list, including the Electric Slide and the Macarena, and true to my type-A music-loving form, I had pretty much created the playlist from start to finish.   I'm sure that took most of the fun out of it for him...

Will and I took the leftover cake back to the Hyatt downtown for late-night noshing, and opened all of our wedding cards and reveled in the magic.   The next morning, all of our guests joined us for a brunch at the top floor of the Hyatt, overlooking a regatta, as luck would have it, down on the lake.  

Overall, a perfect day capping a fantastic courtship and magical engagement.  Little did we know (or, at least, little did I know) that we would be living in Austin within two years of our wedding day...


Happily ever after.