Jess got engaged to her boyfriend of now 9 years about 18 months ago, so I have been looking forward to her wedding for over a year. The wedding was Friday afternoon, so Camilo and I flew from Boston to Chicago late on Thursday evening. On Friday morning, my mom and I went to the bridal suite where all of the bridesmaids and Jess were getting their hair and make-up done. The bridal party hadn't gotten to bed until 2am the night before, and hair dresser and make-up artist arrived at 6:30am to start working: if that's what it takes to have a 3pm church ceremony, I really probably won't have my wedding until midnight so that I can sleep in the day of. The suite was beautiful. If it included a kitchen it could be used as a permanent apartment: there's a foyer area when you enter through the double doors, a full-size dining room to the right, and then both a living room and bedroom in the back with a jacuzzi bathroom! Jess and the bridesmaids stayed there the night before the wedding, then Jess and her new husband Danny stayed there on their wedding night.
Camilo and I went in search of coffee and tissues for the ceremony late in the morning. Coincidentally, the hotel we were staying in and the reception hall were in the town next to where he lived for part of high school! Though he had not been back in five years, he remembered the area perfectly, so we found a Starbucks and a Walmart without a problem, and drove to the reception hall within minutes later that night, even though the official directions were a few miles off and many people got lost.
The wedding ceremony was beautiful. Jess was gorgeous and Danny was stunned as she walked down the aisle toward him, led by her brother. Because her brother, my cousin, Bryan led his mom, my aunt, in first, was a groomsman, and had to give Jess away, he kept walking people down the aisle and circling back, which was amusing. Also, it was a Catholic mass because Danny's family and part of Jess' family are Catholic, so at some points when the priest would give directions, he would say things like "you may now either sit back down or kneel," at which point you knew who was Catholic because those people kneeled. Well, at one of the wedding-specific parts (not part of normal Catholic mass), he invited people to stand. He meant just the wedding party, but the first 2 or 3 rows of "audience" also tentatively stood because we weren't quite sure what was going on... It wasn't all that weird because the non-Catholics probably thought it was another Catholic thing, but after about 20 seconds we realized how dumb we looked, and that we should be sitting, and all sat back down slowly.
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| Outside after the ceremony with the wedding Party Bus (instead of limo) in the background |
Everyone had a blast at the reception! Camilo and I sat with my other cousins and their dates/families, while my parents sat with my mom's sisters and their dates. Our family really knows how to have fun. Right before dinner the wedding party was announced for their entrance with the song "Levels" playing. First the mothers of the bride and groom came running and dancing in, waving their hands in the air. Then the bridesmaids and groomsmen came in pairs dancing in or doing silly things like the "fishing" for each other dance move. Finally, the attention turned toward the grand stairway right next to our table and Jess and Danny made their grand entrance!
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| Mr. and Mrs. Pollock! |
Dinner was an amazing 5 course meal with both stuffed chicken breast and filet mignon, and most important, the wedding cake! Finally, the bride and groom shared their first days to Lady Antebellum's "Just a Kiss," then Jess danced with her mom to Luther Vandross' "Dance with my Father Again" (her dad died when she was only 5 or 6 years old), and Danny shared a dance with his mom. At that point, everyone was invited to join Jess and Danny on the dance floor for a slow dance, so Camilo grabbed my hand and we went out with everyone else. At that point we spent most of the rest of the night on the dance floor. My parents were much better than us at the Twist, but Camilo and I might have been a bit better with the modern music, although my parents did try to keep up. Early in the night we joined my cousins and aunts for dancing and singing, but as the night went on, Camilo and I stayed out there ourselves with a bunch of people we didn't know and had so much fun! We totally made fun of the songs we just couldn't dance to, trying to be all pretend-serious and ghetto (which lasted for about 5 seconds before one of us would start laughing) or just jumping around and being silly. The night lasted until 12:30, at which point we went home totally exhausted. The younger wedding attendees continued the party in a room at the hotel but we just couldn't stay awake.
My parents, Camilo, and I went downtown Saturday afternoon for a couple of hours. My dad had not yet seen Millennium Park with Cloudgate, so we made that our first stop and got to see part of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra practice and the giant silver bean. He was so amused by the reflection and was taking tons of pictures, like us all looking up at the reflection or at the concave part underneath.
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| At the Cloudgate aka Giant Bean |
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| With the Navy Pier ferris wheel |
Afterwards, my dad was dead-set on finding a rooftop bar to have a drink before leaving the city. Unfortunately, rooftop bars haven't really caught on in downtown Chicago yet, so we ended up at the new Trump Tower Hotel. It was absolutely gorgeous and expensive, and the 4 of us kept joking that we got past security to get in and somehow hadn't been kicked-out yet as we made our way to the 16th floor restaurant and bar. Unfortunately the wait was long to sit outside, so we sat by a window for a while admiring the view before leaving for dinner with my family.
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| In Front of Trump Tower (the restaurant was on the first level sticking out) |
Even though I was gone from Boston for less than 3 days, there was so much activity that it felt like a much-needed vacation.
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