after 10 months of anticipation, the wedding day has now come and gone. the synopsis is that everything was Perfect, but i'll let you read it all for yourself in a more presentable order.

6:00 a.m. 02 october 1999

anxiety dreams woke me up. i don't know what the dreams about were, exactly, but they spawned a whole ton of unnecessary thoughts. i wasn't nervous about getting married; my thoughts were more centered around the other factors of the day. would the bouquet of flowers be nothing but weeds the florist pulled from the alley behind the shop? would the minister i found in the baltimore yellow pages come in unshaven carrying a half-emptied bottle of vodka in a paper bag? would my car finally get even with me for ignoring 35,000 miles of scheduled maintenance and die halfway on the trip to baltimore? i'm not sure how i did it, but i convinced myself that things would work out and managed to fall back to sleep for a couple hours.

8:30 a.m.

woke up for real this time with a surprising amount of energy. fed the cats and cleaned the litter boxes - which is a true sign something is up. you could just see the three pairs of feline eyes staring at me, wondering what was going on, and why i would possibly be doing something as constructive as cleaning out their boxes so early in the morning...they knew that this day - especially a saturday - was different than most others.

when i returned inside from topping off some of the low fluids in my car, Nicole was awake. we had some coffee and watched some cartoons, digressing a little.

11:00 a.m.

drove the short distance to the florist. the bouquet of red and white roses was stunning, even for a flower-moron like myself. there were two red roses for the mothers involved, two white roses for the aunt and grandmother attending, and three white roses for the men to wear on their lapels. yes, everybody got a flower at my wedding.

and the best thing was, we were another step closer with having nothing go wrong.

11:30 a.m.

time to start packing. at this point, i had been keeping a checklist for nearly two weeks and was fairly certain that if i managed to take with me everything that was written down on that piece of paper, i would be fine. dress shoes, packed safely in my backpack. rings, packed safely in my left dress shoe. marriage license, pretty important, check. jacket, pants, shirt, ties (yes, two, i'd decide which one to wear when i got there), check. looking at it now, that checklist is pretty darn small. it was pretty much quite the opposite at that point in the morning, however.

everything was sitting in a nice pile by the door. by noon i was pretty well ready to go; i sat and watched some ridiculous college football game wondering why i didn't wake up one hour later.

1:00 p.m.

start hauling stuff to the car. a pretty small job, but it still took a good 20 minutes. we were on the road a little before 1:30, anticipating a good deal of traffic in baltimore thanks to fells point day.

as we exited the d.c. beltway onto I95 north to baltimore, i accused Nicole of being awfully quiet. this was immediately followed by her accusing me of blabbering too much. i don't know what she was talking about, but from that point on to seeing the skyline of baltimore enter our sight we didn't speak much at all. it did take us a good 20-30 minutes to actually make it through the city to our hotel, thanks to the traffic, but since we left early, neither of us were too worried about the time. and, as it turned out, there was no reason to worry at all.

3:30 p.m.

we entered the second floor suite at the harbor inn pier 5 hotel. it was unbelievable; a very smartly designed living room attached to a giant, and equally beautiful, bedroom that overlooked the harbor from the area behind the aquarium. we spent about 15 minutes just wandering from room to room to balcony to room to room to balcony. Nicole's mom, who had met us in the hotel lobby as we arrived, began planning where the ceremony would actually take place, followed by her immediately setting up decorations and food. about 15 minutes later i saw my parents arrive from my window, and by 4:30 we had all met, talked, and then gone our separate ways to begin to get ready for the big event.

5:00 p.m.

i was all ready, sitting in my new clothes, wondering how the temperature of the hotel room could have possible risen 20 degrees in the 15 minutes it took me to get my clothes on. pretty strange, and i swear it stayed that hot until the ceremony concluded, then it cooled down to normal. if you ask me, that was a pretty mean trick for somebody to play.

5:30 p.m.

no minister. did i mention he was supposed to arrive at 5:30? the thing was, we were all pretty sure he was caught in the same traffic mess we were caught in, and not 5 minutes later the front desk called up to tell us he phoned in saying he would be about 15 minutes late. it was a relieving phone call, and within 20 minutes my dad, who waited for the minister at the hotel door, arrived in our room.

just an interesting side note, there was another large wedding going on in the lobby and party area of the hotel we were staying in. it was more traditional; bridesmaids everywhere, one of the little flower or ring bearing kids running around. it was kinda funny, and it was obvious the wedding was beginning at just about the same time we were waiting for our minister to arrive. of course, it was irrational to think our minister would go to the wrong wedding, but i'm pretty sure that is why we had somebody waiting at the door for him...

6:00 p.m.

we finished the formalities with signing the marriage license and such things, and the ceremony began. all fears of the minister were erased immediately; he was a very kind, charismatic man who we felt comfortable with almost immediately. he read us a ceremony, looking at us directly in the eyes while talking to us, and was just about as perfect as a minister could be, i think.

6:20 p.m.

we were pronounced man and wife.

6:25 p.m.

i was the first to say, "you're married, ha ha," ala nelson from the simpsons. it's been the ongoing gag pretty much since the engagement.

6:30 p.m.

i glonked down three very quick glasses of champagne. we took a ton of pictures, wished well the minister, ate some hors d'oeuvres Nicole's mom set out for us, drank some more, took more pictures. if any part of the evening was a blur, it was that part.

in about 20 minutes we walked out of the hotel to head for a restaurant in little italy where we would have our wedding dinner. remember that wedding downstairs? well, obviously their ceremony had just ended as we passed a ton of people in the lobby to find the bride smoking outside the hotel. funny part of all this, Nicole was carrying her bouquet through all the people. we received a number of confused and/or smiling faces at this.

7:00 p.m.

we ate at a restaurant called d'alesios in the little italy section of baltimore. we were given our own small room on the third floor of the restaurant, away from just about everybody minus a small baby shower party in a room down the hall. all my words won't even begin to express how wonderful this dinner was. our waiter was a delightful man name rusty who was a constant joy throughout the dinner. the food and wine were wonderful, and just when we thought the evening was over, we were treated to a bottle of wonderful champagne called in from Nicole's cousin as a wedding surprise.

10:00 p.m.

we headed back to the hotel suite to munch down our wedding cheesecake and open a number of wonderful and generous gifts from relatives and friends of the family.

when we walked out of the hotel around 11:30, the wedding downstairs was obviously breaking up as well. hope they had as fun of time as we did.

11:45 p.m.

we ended the day of 02 october 1999 by walking along the baltimore harbor, then sitting on a bench off away from most of the traffic to sit quietly in the cool evening. all we could basically talk about was just how perfect everything had been. it was the wedding day we had dreamed of, and even though it had come and gone in less than 12 hours, it will certainly be a time we remember forever.

11:59 p.m.

simultaneously, we said, "ha ha, you're married."