Wedding Weekend #1

Me and my cousin at her wedding reception, with her groom “photo bombing” in the background.

By Allan Olson

It’s summer – of course there’s going to be some weddings. This year, we have two weddings – back-to-back. In essence, weddings are wonderful, beautiful events, but when you get right down to it – they’re kinda boring. Every wedding is pretty similar. You’ve got people up front, all dressed up, and people in the congregation wearing every manner of clothing, all staring at the two people getting married. And, of course, everyone wants photos of the lovely couple. 

Now, when you’re the couple standing up there, you don’t really remember the rest of it. At least I didn’t, but then mine was nearly 20 years ago. 

This wedding we went to did have a couple of not-quite-as-common features. My cousin (the bride), who is a few years younger than me, lost both her parents in about a nine-month span nearly a decade ago. It was announced at the wedding that her new partner in life had decided that their wedding date should be on her mom’s (my aunt) birthday – a nice touch, and great way to honor someone.

All along our plans were to leave early Saturday morning and drive straight to the venue, but after talking to my wife I decided at about 5 p.m. Friday that we should consider leaving immediately. The reason: I was tired of breathing in the Canadian smoke, my allergies were bothering me, and it was getting worse. My house is not equipped with central air and so the windows were open with fans running when we’re home. And none of that was helping with the smoke. For me it was so bad on Friday, that I didn’t even want to go outside, and I certainly wasn’t going to do anything in terms of outdoor recreation. 

Ultimately we did leave for the wedding at about 6 p.m., a mere 12 hours earlier than planned. We drove most of the way to the Cities – actually just south of St. Cloud – before checking into the hotel I had reserved about four hours prior.

As for the wedding, it was about as I described – standard fare. On the flip side, it was nice to watch the bride’s big brother stepping in to fill the role of giving away the bride, and to visit with other cousins I haven’t seen since my aunt’s funeral.

Saturday morning we left the hotel fairly early – after a quick dip in a cool pool and a brief attempt at the hot tub which was “not hot.” Once again, the hotel I picked was just okay, but at least their food was good. We had to visit a clothing store because apparently some of us have outgrown our previous dress clothes in one form or another – go figure. That done, we headed to the wedding.

In case you hadn’t noticed – all of this and no geocaching! It was killing me, especially since another cousin reported that he had grabbed some caches on the way.

Finally, on Sunday, I broke down and talked the wife into driving me around the big metro area (give me the country roads) and went on a brief caching run – including a multi-stage cache in Fort Snelling, using a different app that directed us to a variety of gravesites of famous people from Minnesota buried there – including Bob Casey, Charles Lindberg, (not to be confused with Charles Lindbergh), an individual who was one of the original flag raisers at Iowa Jima, another individual who died in the United Airlines Flight 93, (the plane that crashed in the field on 9/11/01), and the “father of open heart surgery” all of whom were from Minnesota. After all of that, we grabbed lunch and then a few more geocaches before going back to the hotel.

This wedding was held in the big metro – in case you couldn’t tell, an area that I’m not all that fond of. This would have been a great time and a whole lot less expensive if just the wife and I went, but as luck would have it, the wedding was on the same weekend as Abigail’s Shriners appointment and so instead the whole family went.

On Sunday we also tried meeting up with another friend, but it ultimately that didn’t work out. So instead, my wife and I attended a small geocaching event in close proximity to our hotel and then Nikolai and I went to grab a couple nearby geocaches after we brought supper back to the rest.

This weekend, we get to go to another wedding – this time it’s my wife’s cousin, a longtime childhood friend and former roommate as well. I know it’s important for me to be there, but it also interferes with my annual geo-caching event, which this year is in Menahga. However, I understand that things happen and I can’t always make my favorite summer event because for some reason, not everybody consults with me to see if their major life decisions will conflict with my schedule. At least this one won’t be several hours away, and as of now it appears that the kids won’t be attending this time, so it should be a simpler trip for the two of us.

The next big thing on our schedule will be the return to school, which is literally just around the corner. I’m excited for the sports season to begin, but not the homework season and the lack of flexibility that school and sports brings to our schedule. But like usual, I’m sure we will survive.

Thanks for reading, and have a great week! Feel free to drop me a line at cltimes1@arvig.net or stop by the office for a visit.