Wedding and Weeding

Phew! Today was a long day! It started yesterday, actually, or maybe back on Wednesday...I've been so busy since about Monday afternoon that it's hard to keep track.

Anyways, today was my friend Andy's wedding and he held it at the Utah Renaissance Faire up in Odgen. I live nowhere near Ogden, so we had to make good and sure we had all the stuff we needed for a long road trip with two toddlers and a newborn. Last night I was up till 4 am (I usually go to bed around midnight) packing our bags with clothing, food, water, toys and tunes for the road. My two oldest were flower girls, so we also had to make sure we brought all the clothing for them, as well as my husband and I.

It was the first conventional full-blown wedding ceremony I'd ever been to. All the others, including my sister's, were simple affairs with a handful of close friends in somebody's backyard or at the church building. Given that my friend does a lot of similar events with the local Belegarth chapters, I'm sure he was able to pull a few strings on the prices, but there was still period costuming, live music (harp and bagpipes!) and sword fighting demonstrations to be paid for. Certainly more than I spent on mine.

The Faire was fun; we hung out for a while until the wedding procession and fortunately the kids didn't get into too much dirt before the ceremony. (I can't say the same for the wedding photos, of course; they were after food and everything.) Afterward, I wandered around with the kids and let them buy $1 souvenirs, which were promptly lost, of course. I bought myself a frog for my sword; unfortunately the one I picked up was a left-handed version. I can use it in reverse, but it won't look as nice. There were a lot of cheap leather bracers too, but nothing anywhere near sturdy enough to replace the ones I had commissioned from Nashova. :(

After the wedding photos, we were sick and tired of chasing kids so we headed out. It sounded like the joust was just starting too - a shame, but we all have bad enough sunburns already that I really can't say I'm sorry I missed it. We went to see Andrek joust a few years ago anyway; there's not as much point to watching a stranger do it. The other thing I missed was playing battleguard; apparently Yestare was being held jointly with the Faire, but nobody mentioned it to me so I didn't bring my weapons. Not that I couldn't have bought some there - I've never seen so many boffer sword vendors in my life!

Back to Tuesday...at work I made a decal for a fellow blogger named Julene. She's got some pretty cool art on her blog, and we managed to make one of the more simple designs into a decal for her car. Now she can advertise her portraits in style. :D

Now then, it's time to go sleep off this sunburn...