The Wedding Rehearsal − 21 July, 1995
My wife and I got married in Kanapaha Botanical Gardens. This is the story of the rehearsal.
Now, having a wedding outdoors in Florida is always risky. For one thing, it's usually hot, even early in the morning; for another, there's the assorted forms of bad weather -- from thunderstorms to hurricanes.
However, there is a pattern. It's generally clear and sunny all day if you are working inside a building; then, about the time you are ready to walk to your car at the end of the day . . . that's when the thunderstorm hits. Most of the severe weather seems to happen between 3 and 6 pm.
So we planned our wedding for the morning -- 10 am. In July, there's no guarantee that will be tolerable. It could already be 95 degrees and 95% humidity by that time. But how to know a year in advance? So we chose the best time we could and moved on.
Below I've posted a few pictures from the rehearsal. I'll go into them and tell a few stories, but first a word about the past.
Gainesville is a strange place. Because it's a college town, people are in flux. Looking back at these wedding photos, I see a lot of friends who are just gone. They moved away, went on to new lives, went beyond the blue event horizon.
That I can bear. But when I was scanning in photos . . . well, let's just say I felt the undertow of the river of time. A lot of people in our wedding photo album are gone as well -- and not moved away: gone, deceased.
So the photos below I had to choose carefully. Some of the ones who are gone warrant their own stories, and I'll have to get to them later.
Moving on . . . .
Below, photo w01 is the actual rehearsal, the evening before the wedding, and gives you a view of the space we were in. If you look on the map, this is right next to that little clump of trees between the Rock Garden, Hummingbird Garden, and Palm Hammock. At the time, there was a "Carnivorous Plants" garden nearby, and I'm not sure what that means in terms of omens. However, a few months after we got married, the tree you see fell over ;-)
Photo w02 is, yes, one of those events where my wife "got" me. In this case, about the time we got to the "Do you have the ring?" part in the practice ceremony, my best man (Keith Martin) handed me one of the "Head Dolls" instead of a ring. I cracked up. Then, the matron of honor (Morgan Hamilton) gave Hannah the other one.
[ Sidenote: OK, these little dolls keep on popping up. Fortunately, Hannah has actually started a page herself here on Dandelife, and she even uses Joan and Amy to introduce herself. One of our running gags is to hide the Head Dolls somewhere that they will be accidentally discovered by the spouse. Hannah is by far better at it than me. Or maybe I'm just easy to surprise. ]
Another interesting fact is that the minister who married us, Jack Donovan, is now one of the city commissioners of Gainesville. That's him at the far left in the photo. Life takes us strange places. After all, the version of me you see in the photo was, at this time, a research chemist -- now I'm a schoolteacher.
After the rehearsal, we had the rehearsal dinner at Bahn Thai restaurant. Picture w03 is me, my Mom, and my Dad. I think I've got that goofy pleased expression not because of the upcoming wedding, but because I was ordering a plate just for myself and told them to go ahead and make it Nuclear Emergency Exploding Volcano Solar Flare Thai Hot. Normally I split a dish with Hannah, and have to pull up.
Picture w04 shows two people I haven't seen in years.
Hannah's friend Tharal lives in Cleveland, and I think the last time I saw her was sometime in the 1990s. Hannah has met up with her a few times when she's gone north. However, those times have been much fewer since Hannah's mom moved from Cleveland to Akron.
And then there's Andrea Leslie. She was a member of my church, and was there the day that I met Hannah.
See, Hannah and I met and went on our first date in the same day. That was totally out of character for someone like me who is, believe it or not, fairly cautious and shy.
But like I said earlier: when you meet the right person, you're generally the second person to know, after the immediate bystanders. After Hannah and I left, my friends apparently were like "Whoa, what just happened?" because the chemistry was evident.
Like I said, though -- Gainesville is a city of flux. Before the 1990s were out, Andrea and many of my other friends would be gone, moved away. I made new ones, but I wonder sometimes about the old ones.
Now, having a wedding outdoors in Florida is always risky. For one thing, it's usually hot, even early in the morning; for another, there's the assorted forms of bad weather -- from thunderstorms to hurricanes.
However, there is a pattern. It's generally clear and sunny all day if you are working inside a building; then, about the time you are ready to walk to your car at the end of the day . . . that's when the thunderstorm hits. Most of the severe weather seems to happen between 3 and 6 pm.
So we planned our wedding for the morning -- 10 am. In July, there's no guarantee that will be tolerable. It could already be 95 degrees and 95% humidity by that time. But how to know a year in advance? So we chose the best time we could and moved on.
Below I've posted a few pictures from the rehearsal. I'll go into them and tell a few stories, but first a word about the past.
Gainesville is a strange place. Because it's a college town, people are in flux. Looking back at these wedding photos, I see a lot of friends who are just gone. They moved away, went on to new lives, went beyond the blue event horizon.
That I can bear. But when I was scanning in photos . . . well, let's just say I felt the undertow of the river of time. A lot of people in our wedding photo album are gone as well -- and not moved away: gone, deceased.
So the photos below I had to choose carefully. Some of the ones who are gone warrant their own stories, and I'll have to get to them later.
Moving on . . . .
Below, photo w01 is the actual rehearsal, the evening before the wedding, and gives you a view of the space we were in. If you look on the map, this is right next to that little clump of trees between the Rock Garden, Hummingbird Garden, and Palm Hammock. At the time, there was a "Carnivorous Plants" garden nearby, and I'm not sure what that means in terms of omens. However, a few months after we got married, the tree you see fell over ;-)
Photo w02 is, yes, one of those events where my wife "got" me. In this case, about the time we got to the "Do you have the ring?" part in the practice ceremony, my best man (Keith Martin) handed me one of the "Head Dolls" instead of a ring. I cracked up. Then, the matron of honor (Morgan Hamilton) gave Hannah the other one.
[ Sidenote: OK, these little dolls keep on popping up. Fortunately, Hannah has actually started a page herself here on Dandelife, and she even uses Joan and Amy to introduce herself. One of our running gags is to hide the Head Dolls somewhere that they will be accidentally discovered by the spouse. Hannah is by far better at it than me. Or maybe I'm just easy to surprise. ]
Another interesting fact is that the minister who married us, Jack Donovan, is now one of the city commissioners of Gainesville. That's him at the far left in the photo. Life takes us strange places. After all, the version of me you see in the photo was, at this time, a research chemist -- now I'm a schoolteacher.
After the rehearsal, we had the rehearsal dinner at Bahn Thai restaurant. Picture w03 is me, my Mom, and my Dad. I think I've got that goofy pleased expression not because of the upcoming wedding, but because I was ordering a plate just for myself and told them to go ahead and make it Nuclear Emergency Exploding Volcano Solar Flare Thai Hot. Normally I split a dish with Hannah, and have to pull up.
Picture w04 shows two people I haven't seen in years.
Hannah's friend Tharal lives in Cleveland, and I think the last time I saw her was sometime in the 1990s. Hannah has met up with her a few times when she's gone north. However, those times have been much fewer since Hannah's mom moved from Cleveland to Akron.
And then there's Andrea Leslie. She was a member of my church, and was there the day that I met Hannah.
See, Hannah and I met and went on our first date in the same day. That was totally out of character for someone like me who is, believe it or not, fairly cautious and shy.
But like I said earlier: when you meet the right person, you're generally the second person to know, after the immediate bystanders. After Hannah and I left, my friends apparently were like "Whoa, what just happened?" because the chemistry was evident.
Like I said, though -- Gainesville is a city of flux. Before the 1990s were out, Andrea and many of my other friends would be gone, moved away. I made new ones, but I wonder sometimes about the old ones.
w01
w02
w03
w04
