I realized I forgot to ever post anything about Zuzana's wedding. It was pretty fun. The rehearsal dinner was really nice, because they invited lots of people who weren't in the wedding at all, just people who were extra-special to them. It was at Mancini's - we got there and there was this buffet spread out, so we took some plates and began eating. I ate a few plates worth of food, and drinks, and then Chris comes around and announces that we'll be ordering our food in about 5 minutes. What?! I was already way full from what were apparently just the appetizers. Oops! But I got some meat anyway. Annie was very funny because she was drinking Shirley Temples all night and ordering off of the kiddie menu.

The day of the wedding was crazy. We went to get our hair done around 10 -- wasn't a complete fan of what she did to my hair, but oh well. We headed over to the church to get ready and do photos; we were supposed to have at least half an hour when we got there to eat lunch etc while the guys were doing photos, but apparently the creepy photographer only wanted to take the guys' pictures for about 5 minutes, so I barely had time to get into my dress and makeup before rushing upstairs. Mmmm...so hungry. Hadn't really eaten anything that morning because I was counting on lunch coming quickly.

The wedding itself was funny, too. Annie was standing next to me crying the whole time; Chris and Zuzana were sitting up by the altar goofing off the whole time. At one point Chris saw Annie and pointed her out to Zu and laughed at her. Haha. The whole ceremony seemed to go very quickly. They lit their unity candle and sat back down, and during the ceremony the candle went out. Hahaha. Great sign, huh?

At the end of the ceremony we all walked back down the aisle. I got out of the church and found one of the flower girls bawling on the steps. She jumped into my arms and cried and cried, and finally told me that she forgot to go down the aisle at the end and ruined everything, etc. I hadn't noticed that she had done anything wrong, so I just told her that and that she looked very pretty and everyone else agreed. She somewhat calmed down but was still crying during the pictures.

We got on the bus to go to the country club, where we did a few more pictures. Then we all fanned out in search of appetizers to fill our stomachs with. They were rather few and far between (I assume there were lots, but it was hard to track down the servers.) There was an open bar, so people were already getting plenty drunk by dinner. We eventually went and sat down for that, and had cheesecake-appetizers at the table, and were then served our meal. The families and bride and groom and best man did all their speeches, and they went on for a while, so when Zuzana finished hers, Chris got up and said, ok, we're done...unless anyone else has something to say (jokingly). Oops! His friend Cameron got up, and Cameron had clearly taken advantage of the open bar. He began this long slurry speech about how good Chris and his friends had been when he first moved to the country, and on and on, about nothing much, and one of his friends finally told him that was enough, why don't you sit down now. He didn't though until he introduced everyone to his girlfriend, "that Asian girl over there." That speech was...something.

After dinner, 3/4 of the crowd quickly got up and left the room. And most of them never came back! I thought that was rather rude: most of the people at the dinner hadn't shown up to the ceremony, and then they ate dinner and left right away?? Poor taste. But they opened up the dance floor, which went on for the rest of the night.

At 10 pm they did a fireworks show. They called everyone out on the deck and we got ready: 2 fireworks went off. Everyone paused for a moment and then began to clap, yay for the big fireworks show. Chris started laughing though, because he just wanted to do that as a joke. Then the real show began: it was really cool, because we were right underneath them. This time there were a lot of them, very cool; at the end they did two heart fireworks for Zuzka and Chris.

Later that night I managed to catch Zuzana alone and give her the afghan. She cried. Paul scolded me for giving her it when she was so emotional. Haha.

Overall, it was a very fun wedding. I wonder what Emily's will be like. Paul has taken to referring to it as "World War Wedding." I think that with some other members of my family there (Deirdre, James, Peter), maybe it will end up not being too bad. ??

After the ceremony we did a few more pictures, and then went out to the country club to get some more done.