Overcast made the photos turn out gorgeous!
The church was beautiful, the ceremony was wonderful and it started raining sometime during mass.
I think it's the first rain we've had since early May...maybe even April. So..yeah...good for the grass and crops and gardens but...not so good when you're throwing a party for 200 people in the back yard.
For a few of the folks who spent the last several months planning all this, panic neared the surface. Both Jay and Tyler were very familiar with the story of our wedding, 40 years ago when we planned on hosting most of Southwest Minneapolis in my folks' backyard. Not only had it rained every single day in June of '81, a tornado ripped through the neighborhood one week before the big day. My Dad famously told my mom that in the case of rain on the Big Day, he was prepared to go straight from the church to the airport to avoid the disastrous reception. On the drive to Tyler's place after the wedding, both our planners wished they had made such a contingency plan.
But the Groom proved once and for all that Attitude Is Everything.
As they dashed through the rain to the limo (a Bentley!) that would take the newly married couple to their reception, the Bride asked the Groom "what are we gonna do?" and he said "We're gonna dance in the rain!"
And so we did.
I knew that all would be well when we reached the Supper Club to which we'd invited the guests to park their cars and have a drink while waiting for the bus that would shuttle them to the reception. Sure, the club manager was in a panic, since they'd made these arrangements with us when we all assumed the patio area would be available. As it was, the manager was quite concerned that our guests would crowd out all others. While Jay was on the phone asking the bus driver to begin the party a half hour early, I was talking to some of the first wedding guests to arrive at the Supper Club. It was very apparent that the guests barely noticed the rain and were only excited about the first big party since February of 2020.
Rain? What rain? was the consensus among the guests. We came to CELEBRATE!
I was on the first bus up the hill (Jay was supposed to drop me off at the house but in his panic he forgot) and when I arrived at the house, I found that Sara's friends had executed Plan B with the precision and forethought of Eisenhower on D-Day. In fact, they out performed Ike in that they didn't land a single thing on the wrong beach.
Someone offered me an umbrella when I got off the bus but I declined. First, the rain was more like a warm mist; second, I was resigned to getting soaked to the bone.
Those of us who were worried that guests might not come to the reception in the rain were wrong. Everyone came. Everyone stayed. Everyone got soaked. Everyone had a blast. Everyone danced in the rain.
I had known that none of the Pivecs or Hubbells would let a little rain stop them from enjoying the first big bash in two years. WE love a family wedding above nearly everything else!
It was so much fun to see everyone! We had relatives in from California, Illinois, Colorado, Arizona and Tennessee. There were friends and family that live here in town yet we hadn't seen since the shut downs began 15 months ago. There was a lot of hugging. Even those of us who were never 'huggers' were doing it because we could.
The Bride and Groom greeted guests as they got off the bus with Leis. The warm rain actually added to the tropical theme of the party.
The food (from Mr. Pig Stuff in Shakopee) was fantastic! For dessert we had a full sheet cake and 30 dozen chocolate chip cookies. It was all great.
Instead of a band or a DJ, Tyler bought himself a huge speaker that worked with bluetooth. Zack and Sara put together a dinner music list that played for the first couple of hours and a dance mix that ran for 5 or 6 hours. Despite days of testing for the music, they couldn't get it to work when it was time for speeches. My nephew Logan (professional sound engineer touring out of Nashville) was called in to help. He turned on the mic.
The dance mix had a little something for everyone. Sticking with tradition, we began with the Bride and Groom dance, then the Bride and her Dad and the Groom and his Mom...then, purely out of kindness, the Bride and Groom shared their day with us and Jay and I got to dance on our 40th anniversary to In My Life, by the Beatles, which was part of the music at our wedding 6/26/81.
Because of the rain, we began the party a bit early. Jay was one of the last to arrive because his job was to get guests on the bus down at the supper club and they were having fun there, too. I had been texting him pictures from the top of the hill to assure him that everyone was having fun and the party into which he (and so many others) had put so much effort was a huge success. I think he could tell, even from the bottom of the hill.
One of the first couples we met when we arrived at the Supper Club was a woman whom Sara works with. Her husband looked at Jay and said "Did you used to coach basketball?"
Turned out, this young man had played for Jay (and head coach Reese Johnson) at Augsburg college back in 1980 when the Auggies went 32-0. File that under 'small world'.
The rain actually kept us comfortable as we danced the hours away. Back in 2010, when Megan and Ty got married, it was sunny and 100. I was just as wet at their reception but it was a much stinkier wet.
The bus made its last run back to the Supper Club (where the cars were parked) at ten. Guests didn't have to leave by then, they just had to make other arrangements to get back to their cars. By then, the party had been raging for 7 hours, so lots of people were partied out. My Mom was far away the oldest guest and she left around ten. JP, who had been going hard all week, was ready to take her home. All the families with little kids and most of the folks over 60 were gone by ten.
The Groom ordered a stack of pizzas after the last bus. The two or three dozen of us left dancing fueled up on pizza and got our second wind. Some time after 11, the Bride and Groom took off. Xena, Babalouie and Kitten went to bed. Adam and BoopityBoop crashed on an air mattress somewhere in the basement.
When we got to the end of the dance mix Zack had put together, Jay looped his phone to the speaker and we just kept dancing.
Sometime after midnight, the last of the cousins finally had danced enough, the music ended and we collapsed into the guest bedroom.
Zack and Sara's marriage is off to a tremendously successful start.