The Married Life

It’s been awhile since my last blog and have been meaning to write for a while. Sometimes it feels like a chore but I know if I skipped writing about this period of my life I’d probably regret it later.

Time flew after coming back from the school trip to France in early April and finishing the school year all in quite a haze. Finishing the tennis season and preparing for the wedding while teaching two preps and finishing the gifted program was stressful. I was super ready to head off to go back to France for Chris and Sarah Gold’s wedding the same day school ended. The French Riveria did not disappoint, nor did the amazingly fun home wedding in the hills. It really is super beautiful there and different than any other part of France I’d been to previously. It was also cool that their wedding flowed so naturally and the dancing didn’t start until almost midnight because they could do whatever they wanted with it being at their home. I wish we had more time to explore the Cote D’Azur but the one full day we had was special. We took a boat with good friend Dave Leiberman and his girl Laini out to St. Tropez and had an amazing gastronomy meal in the evening our Air BnB hosts recommended near Nice. It was an expensive but definitely worthwhile short trip.

After a short day and a half in Montreal it was back to Vermont where we pretty much spent the entire 3.5 days prepping for the wedding. We never did get to the end of the “checklist” and I think people were somewhat right to question the wisdom of going to another wedding the week before our own in Southern France.

The wedding itself was super fun and unlike most people, while I was relieved to be done with the stress of preparing, I wasn’t happy to be done with it. It really is an amazing feeling to have everybody you love in one place for one day, and in our case, our own private funk band. I thought about the whole thing like grabbing 100 friends and taking them all out to a very expensive meal and then picking up the bar tab too. But it’s also hard not being able to take to all of those great friends and family, some of whom have come from very hard, for just those few hours. Overall, it’s crazy to spend so much money in one day but on the other hand I struggle to think of better ways to spend money in my life, especially on any material possessions that won’t mean anything anyways someday when we are all gone from this earth. Jonah argued that you could just use this money to visit all of your friends around the world but I question this logic. Are you really actually going to do this? Getting the time and coordinating to make it work with friends seems like it would impede this from actually happening. Now we can look forward to Manju’s wedding in Chicago and not having to do anything this time. Oh wait, we still have “Thank You’s” and the wedding album to do, ugh…

One last thought about the wedding: Maya and I both realized that we are never probably going to look as good again as we did on our wedding day. While I suppose that's normal, it's kind of a strange thought. My grand father's top hat crushed my ears and probably looked a little stupid but I'm still glad I did it. On other hand, Maya was gorgeous and those hundreds of dollars that she put into to make herself up were worth it.

Lastly, a lot of my friends have asked me “what’s it like being a married man?” now and obviously for anyone who’s been living with the partner for long enough and in a certain routine it’s not much different at all. Just to change things up and keep it interesting I’ve jokingly been saying: “it’s horrible, I made a huge mistake, the commitment is too much.” In all seriousness, the difference has been always wearing this strange gold ring (makes my other fingers look naked) and saying “my wife” as I’m still adjusting to the fact that I have to remember that I actually am married now. The other thing is that I am relieved that I don't actually have to do anything anymore, no flowers or boxes of chocolate or looking nice or wearing deodorant. In all seriousness, I'm just glad I don't have to manage trying to break that glass again in front of 170 people, even with two tries!  

 

Also had my first chance to meet my new nephew Abel! Here we are playing some music for him!

It was jazz fest in Burlington which was quite fun after things calmed down a bit after the wedding

Lots of wedding toasts

Getting ready

It was a bit of a tight squeeze in our makeshift aisle once we had to scramble inside with the heavy rains

A rainy wedding day is said to be good luck but I wonder if that's just to make us feel better about the fact that it's raining on our wedding day?

Could it be the first appearance of Herb to the blog?

Under the hoopah that Sara gave us right after her wedding in Port Grimaud

W/friends in front of Triller slideshow 

Beautiful trip with Dave and co. to St. Tropez