Roberto was the official photographer and posted his images to flickr (available only to family, sorry!). Naturally, rIAm couldn’t keep her hands off the camera and then I took over when I arrived with the boys and our photos are also on flickr.

Of course we also hosted a party – Bolts and Busts – to celebrate with Bianca and Colin together, and those photos are on flickr too (and as a slideshow after the jump).

Hard to believe their wedding is only 40 days away!

And here is the full text of the speech:

Welcome. I’m so glad so many people were able to come together on this cold and snowy day. It’s hard for me to believe I am standing here, as I realized the other day, a little over 12 years since Justin first showed up in my US History class. And science class, and math and English classes. Even, we figured out, lunch period.

I can’t say I have been waiting for this day for 12 years, or even 6 years. Stephanie has been, but not me. [pause] But I wasn’t surprised to hear that Justin finally took the plunge, and headed down this incredible path of marriage. And in typically Justin fashion, I found out by email – In a response to a quick note I sent to say rIAm and I were in town after our year of traveling. I have that email here:

After short pleasantries, he wrote:
Steph and I do have some big news. After five years she finally caught me and we are now engaged. The wedding will be December 6th, 2008 and will be held up here around Naperville. We are using the chapel at the Naper settlement and having the reception at the Abbington in Glen Ellyn. Looks like I will now have the occasion to return the best man book to use, as I believe you will need it. I was hoping you would be back in town soon.

And with that, I knew exactly where I’d be this day, and that I had to give this speech. For the record, he never did return that best man book.

Looking back on it all, I suppose it was inevitable that we would become such good friends. Considering we spent over half our day with each other at school, it was no surprise Justin decided we should start hanging out on the weekend. I think the first exchange went about like this, one Friday morning in Eby’s history class:

Justin asked “do you want to get together later?”
To which I responded, “yeah, we always have lunch together”
“No, tonight” Justin responded, holding back on calling me a moron, regretting that he picked me to ask instead of somebody who actually understood what he was talking about.

But we figured out we could go bowling, which led to a pool table, which led to pretty much a standing date every weekend for the next 6 years. We pushed curfew all through high school, only to come home reeking of smoke, and then we pushed closing time at the pool halls all through college. Which is also how we found the meat lovers skillet at Denny’s, and baffled my dad, who could never understand why we would be out so late. We haven’t closed a pool hall – or had a meat lovers skillet – in quite some time, but we found ourselves racking up some nine ball Thursday night like we’ve done a thousand times before.

The cast of supporting characters changed many times through the years. Friends came and went, others stuck around, but our friendship was constant. Ineed, Justin’s family moved, and then moved again, and then moved some more. Friends scattered around the country, but defying all odds, Justin just bounced back and forth between DeKalb and the Greater Naperville Area, the place he can most call home. In fact, it was me who moved this time, first into Chicago then across Asia and now to Toronto.

But it didn’t – doesn’t – matter. It never did. Justin and I share that rare sort of friendship where we can go months without talking, but we pick right back up where we left off the next time. And although we depend on that perhaps a bit more than we’d like, it always works.

I’m not sure that I have much advice for Justin, I preceded him in marriage two and a half years ago, but I do know a few things.

What I’ll call the Stephanie years started out rocky, as far as I was concerned. They had a roommate who defined the word “slob,” one who managed to blow up their toilet. And admittedly, I wasn’t so sure the pairing would stick. But my instinct wasn’t working back then, it seems, and Justin’s never been one to share his emotions readily, so it took a couple years for me to see why this relationship worked.

But first, let me explain a little something about Justin. He loves to learn, particularly if he can then beat somebody at the thing he learns. It’s the mild OCD, as he puts it, that every genius needs to become the very best. He’s had books on chess, pool, skiing, paintball, guitar, cars and probably guitar hero. But I never saw him with a relationship book, so I wasn’t sure how hard he was working on that part of his life. Steph, you’ll be happy to know, I caught Justin this afternoon with a book that should him him tonight.

Another thing about Justin, despite being a huge geek, he always maintained a pretty good sense of the world around him, and a self-awareness that he was a huge geek. So he overcompensated with cars, and fortunately, understood that quoting from the chess book “knight to c5, queen to d6,” and so on just didn’t hold the same social appeal as “9 ball corner pocket.”

So with as many self-absorbed, expensive and time consuming hobbies as Justin has, he’s also managed to keep a wonderful woman happy, and she has in return been extraordinarily patient and made sure that Justin has had, for a number of years – especially so since they bought their house – a warm and inviting home filled with not just candles and cats, but a whole lot of love.

And this is what makes Steph such a good match for Justin. She is that unique personality that is simultaneously supportive and encouraging, but also practical, understanding, and let me emphasize, patient. I know a little something about having such an amazing partner in life, and Justin’s smartest move is making sure this relationship was his last.

The cliche that two people are better together than on their own rings true in this relationship. Steph brings out the best in Justin, without trying to hold him back. And Justin does the same in return, and I’m confident that neither of them would be as happy or as successful as they are today, if they had spent the last six years without each other.

And so that is what makes me so happy to be here today. Some might be thinking, what has changed today? Yes, these two are now married, but they still live together, they have been functioning as a married couple, and other than perhaps changing beneficiaries on a pension plan, what has changed?

Well that is something I do know something about. Justin, it’s going to feel really good now to introduce Steph to people as your wife, and talk about Rod and Terri as your in-laws. It’s a wonderful new adventure ahead of you, and the beauty of it all is that you have the most solid foundation possible upon which to build the rest of your lives.

And so it is with tremendous pleasure, even pride, that I am standing here today. I wish you both nothing but the best, and nothing but happiness. I know you know that it won’t always be easy, but it’s always worthwhile, and at the end of each day, there is nobody either of you would rather come home to.

Let’s all raise our glasses, in celebration of your marriage and love for each other. Congratulations, and, Cheers.

Since we’d had some misunderstandings in the past about when certain plans were going to happen, I was careful to inquire in advance about what time I should be ready. I figured out 6pm.

Later, it was made clear that I was going by rickshaw with the three boys at 6pm. Hari and Vanita would come by motorbikeat 8 or 9pm. I didn’t really understand, but I knew it was better to go along with their plans.

When the time came, I was ready, and as the rickshaw pulled up, I realized there was a giant thing on the back of it. Then I realized that in addition to the mattress they were giving Barti (the bride), they must have also arranged a bed. So now it made sense, we were going with the bed and mattress and Hari and Vanita were coming later.

Now, this rickshaw was the type that has what looks like a motorcycle in front with a pickup bed in back. The bed didn’t fit inside, so it was up on top, sitting high above the driver. The mattress went into the bed, and then the boys and I went on top of the mattress. Off we went, like some great Maharajas, drawing the attention of locals all along the bumpy roads.

Everything was going along just fine, albeit very bumpy on the terrible roads made worse by the monsoons, and we were enjoying the scenery and seasonal rivers. Until, of course, we heard a very loud crack. The bed had broken. One of the two main support beams on the bottom was very much cracked. After talking to Hari we figured out we were headed back to the farm.

So about 90 minutes after we left the farm, we returned. Hari and Vanita were off with Jayesh to Mandvi to visit another of Hari’s sisters, who also had a child getting married. The rest of us waited on the farm.

But first, I had some washing to do.

Yes, washing. Because, you see, on the way back to the farm we couldn’t sit up in the bed anymore. Dharmendra sat under the bed, but the rest of us sat on the back with our legs hanging down off the rear end. Perfectly normal in India. I even took off my sandals so I wouldn’t lose one on one of the bumps.

As it turns out, that wasn’t such a good idea. As we rolled over an apparently fresh cow pie, it splattered like slime on Nickelodeon’s old show Double Dare. My right foot, mostly on the bottom, was covered. I had splatters on both pants legs. And my youngest traveling companion couldn’t stop yelling “Mendhi! Natural!” The rest couldn’t help but laugh, which was also Vanita and Hari’s response when they found out. And Vijay wasn’t much different. He at least understood why I wanted to wash myself.

And so, quite a bit after anybody planned, we found ourselves piling into Vijay’s car and leaving the farm at 10pm. My feet were clean, my pants clean enough and I couldn’t help but think two things. We might not be coming back that night (and I wasn’t really prepared for that) and that this would be the first – and like probably only – wedding I ever attended with manure on my pants.

By 11pm we arrived and found plenty of people milling about the village street in front of Barti’s house, with plenty more people in and just outside of the house. It was a mostly segregated affair, with the women inside socializing and doing mendhi while the men sat around outside.

I found it to be much like a big backyard barbeque back home. But without the meat. Or any food, for that matter. And without the barbeque. And none of the beer. Although the chai was pretty much free flowing. There was also no grass, but none of these things stopped people from enjoying themselves.

And the women came in their traditional finest, with sarees of seeimingly every color and design. The men, on the other hand, came in whatever happened to be at the top of the pile, often times this was even a clean set of clothes. And since India, while often fashion-minded, is stuck in a fashion that fits the 1980s, the men looked like they came out of the 1980s. Of course, the women looked like they came out of the 1780s.

Slowly I realized that this wasn’t actually the wedding. This was the final celebration before the actual wedding, which would take place the next night. I also found out I had been right, we were spending the night. If I had known that in advance I may have brought a toothbrush, more safe drinking water or contact lens solution and glasses. I was very glad to have packed rewetting drops. I also figured out that this party wasn’t going to stop.

After a while a guy with a drum started banging away while women and children starting dancing around him. This went on for a while, an interesting and impressive display. Then some guys came and would lift up small rupee notes and drop them down, in some sort of traditional offering. Then Barti was brought out and sat in a chair in the middle of the circle. Her brother squatted next to her and collected the fallen bills. More and more people came up to wave money over Barti’s head and let it fall to the ground. This went on and on.

Eventually the drumming stopped and the dancers dispersed and around they came with more tea for us. A little bit later, the drumming started again. Now anybody who wanted to could dance around in a circle. And this cycle was repeated all night, although not typically with the money. At some point I was given a cot and I fell asleep. A few others had done the same. Plenty never even closed their eyes.

But before I slept I really need to pee. I had scouted around the house thinking they may have a spot for this sort of thing, but I had only found a washing area (of course, as I walked back around the house from this discovery, I came across two squatting toddlers). I figured I’d ask Hari where I might find a toilet. I figured it would be very basic, but that there must be a spot for this sort of business. He told me to get water. I explained I didn’t need that much toilet. He figured out “only urinal.” I smiled and said yes, always surprised at which words Hari knows. I was directed around the house. There was a covered area, completely pitch black. I held my breath, stepped in as far as I dared, took aim and hoped for the best. I have no idea what I hit, but I was glad to be done. A few hours of sleep were waiting.

Hari woke me about 6 and we were on the road by 6:30. Vanita and Chetan stayed behind. Hari explained that “India… open toilet” and offered me the chance to use the river and its water. I declined. Later that day Hari and Dharmendra took off, I discovered, for Barti’s actual wedding. Jayesh and I were left behind. For the next day as well.

So, feeling bad that Jayesh was left behind only to take care of me, I made sure we got a special treat of ice cream and a mango drink in the village. Ice cream is his favorite treat (and I sure don’t mind it either!), and mango is both of our favorites. This put a smile on both our faces, as we were both rather disappointed to not be at the wedding, and it was an awfully quiet and rainy day on the farm, leaving us not much to do.

Heavy rains came in the afternoon (it was light all morning), and that brought the family home early, soaked, and we all enjoyed a late dinner. Perhaps secretly Jayesh and I were amused by the completely soaked and premature return of the family.

All this was the start, though, of a great friendship between Jayesh and me. Vijay and I were heading to the Vipassana meditation center to be there for rIAm’s final day – the one where she can talk to people – and then take her home the next day. I was also going to help with some trimming, and it was decided to send Jayesh along for the two nights.

Jayesh makes for a great friend, but let me tell you, he also makes for an excellent roommate. Since there was only one single bed, I got that and Jayesh got a mattress on the floor. He had this arranged nicely, but I pointed out that there were two more thin mattresses he could put under his to make an even more comfortable bed. Maybe this had occured to him, maybe not, but he was very happy I was so insistent, and you could tell he thought the bed got much better. Similarly, he was insistent I take the fairly heavy blanket, but quite happy to be able to use it for himself when I made it clear that even if I took the blanket I wouldn’t use it – I’m hot even with the fan, I said, but he’d be cold. He agreed and was happy to be curled up under the blanket at night.

In any case, from about 4pm on the 2nd until 8am on the 4th Jayesh and I were practically inseprable. We drew the attention of a number of Indians at the center, who were quite impressed. I couldn’t tell what was more impressive to them, though. That I had such a good Indian friend or that an Indian had such a good westerner as a friend. Or, perhaps, that we could easily talk to each other. Everybody agreed that Jayesh needs to come to the U.S. or Canada one day to visit.

Trough all of this, we all had a great time on the farm and in Kutch. We each found something we were looking for, and some other things we weren’t. We look forward to the day we can return to the farm, perhaps with our children, but we also look forward to bringing some elements of Kutch to Canada.

Cooking over a fire, eating with our hands, eating on the ground and making kitcheree all come to mind as occasional excellent reminders of life in India. Not to mention wearing Kutchee handicrafts and sleeping under our beautiful new quilt. We have much to take with us back home, both in materials, memories, photographs and ideas. We are excited!

(Too bad date trees don’t grow in Toronto, though!)

Yes, that would be half of the assembled guests, during the ceremony, in a photo taken by the Bride. During the ceremony. Taken by the bride. Everybody follow? (click photo for more description)

*Don’t expect a photo every day. Hopefully we’ll have occasional posts based on a photo like this, though. It’s pretty easy and fun to do.

Vorrei dire qualche parola per Renee e la sua famiglia. Anzitutto vi prego di scusare il mio accento.

A Renee, ti amo. Vivere insieme e` la cosa piu` bella del mondo, specialmente oggi. Ma devo anche dire che Toronto e le nostre vite non sarebbero quello che sono se non fosse per la tua famiglia e i tuoi amici.

E cosi` desidero dire grazie ai genitori di Renee, i nonni, sorelle, zie e zii, parenti tutti ed amici.

Non solo voi avete condiviso con me l’amore di Renee, ma sin dall’inizio mi avete accettato come un figlio, con amore, rispetto e generosita`. La vostra fiduccia in me non risultera` mal risposta; io avro` sempre cura di Renee. E soprattutto sono orgoglioso di essere parte della vostra famiglia. Grazie.

Translation:

I have a few words for Renée and her family. First of all, please excuse my accent.

To Renée, I say I love you. Sharing our lives with each other is the greatest feeling in the world, especially today. But I must say, Toronto, and our lives, would not be the same without your family and friends.

On that note, to Renée’s parents, grandparents, sisters, aunts & uncles, and other family and friends, I say thank you very much. Not only have you shared Renée with me, but you accepted me from the beginning and treated me the way you treat Renée, with love, respect and generosity. Your trust in me to take care of Renée has not been misplaced. And most of all, I am very proud to consider you all family. Thank you.

And it will be a bender indeed with many last minute details to attend to and much fun planned with our wedding party and families. I have admittedly been a little crazed these last couple of days before I leave (ok, uh, I’ve been through several crazed periods during the time we’ve been planning this wedding), but a lot of it has to do with how incredibly excited I am to see everyone who is coming to our wedding, and to immerse myself in this wedding week bender and our wedding day.

I have had difficulty finding the words to articulate precisely the range of emotions I have been experiencing lately about this event and the whole process we’ve gone through to get to our wedding day. All I can say for certain is I am so thrilled that we are doing this and about how we are doing this. Eloping would have been easy, less costly and yes, less stressful, but I’ve never been about the easy way out. I’ve stuck by my motto to seize the day, and oh boy, me and j. will have some good stories to tell our kids about the crazy yet lovely time we had to get ourselves hitched.

As you can tell, neither of j. or I has spent much time posting to PB in over a month (and it’s been even longer on Flickr, oops). I don’t feel bad about letting this space languish for a bit because I’ve been more interested in enjoying what we can of Chicago and our friends here, all while we make our plans for the wedding and for the future. A part of the future has included working on our masters projects (we’re aiming for December 2006 graduation) and planning our Route 66/Highway 1 honeymoon. But we also have been making progress on some of other scrumptious plans… I’ll leave it at that and spill the beans on those plans closer to when we’ve firmed up the details of what we have up our sleeves…

For now, even though I’m still in Chi-town, my head is already in Toronto and lapping up all that waits for me there. I’m keeping my heart here until I get on the plane tomorrow. Here, because that is where j. is, because wherever he is where I want to be.

Obviously, from a strictly legal perspective, we’re not married. We’ve not gotten a license or gone through any formal ceremony. So no, we’re not married. But under Canadian law, we’d qualify as common law partners if we went back to Canada right now. And that’s pretty similar to being married. So let’s go beyond the legal mumbo jumbo for a bit.

The bottom line for those who consider us married already is that I asked rIAm to marry me — to spend the rest of her life with me — and she said yes. So we’ve already made the commitment, right? We’ve both said “I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” and then we shared that decision with everybody we know.

What are we really accomplishing in 205 days that we haven’t already accomplished? Sure we’ll be making it official and legal that we are married — not common law — but really, we’re throwing a giant and fantastic party. Our commitment to each other will not suddenly have changed. Our relationship won’t really change, either; we pretty much function like a married couple as it is. So all of this work rIAm (especially), and many others, are doing in order to have a phenomenal wedding day, is so that our closest friends and family can see us exchange our vows and then have a wonderful meal with us — and party.

In fact, rIAm and I see this as much a great opportunity for a family reunion as much as anything — when else will all of these amazing people be together in one place? But as for being married, back in June when I decided once and for all that rIAm was the woman for me, I made the big commitment — vow — and took the plunge. On July 30th, I’ll simply re-affirm the promise I made in the form of a question, but this time in front of 200 people: I want to spend the rest of my life with one and only one woman, and her name is renée.

So our wedding category is lacking posts, which might lead anyone reading this site (who does read this site, anyhow?) to think we haven’t been doing much planning for this supposed wedding taking place next summer. In fact, we’ve been doing plenty of wedding planning all this fall, but there hasn’t been much to publicize except for our wedding date.

Do you really want to know how much I ooohed and ahhhed when I looked at Noisette Patry Works’s wedding cake gallery? And would you find it as funny as I did that the fellow who owns Sweet Gallery, an Old World-style bakery my family has purchased cakes from for years, exclaimed, “Good girl! They know how to cut wedding cake there.” when I told him the wedding was going to be at the Old Mill Inn and Spa?

We are heading to Toronto for Christmas, followed by roaming to all ends of the GTA for wedding related appointments between Dec. 26 and Dec. 30, which should be productive and fun. All this should also yield some interesting updates as we get deeper into wedding planning: more gift registry scanning, visiting a florist, Old Mill menu and wedding cake tastings (mmmmmm), trying on tuxedos and a bridesmaids night on the town (no drunk pictures of me shall be posted on this web site… but they may get posted on Flickr if I finally get my act together and start posting to my pro account there!)

I’ll try not to bore you with too many details and stick to things that give you insight into what we are planning and at the very least, give you the scoop on what you need to know if you will be one of our wedding guests. I was thinking about saying something snarky here about people who might stumble across this site and who are not invited to our wedding, but for now I will hold my blogging tongue.

One final observation/insight for this post…

The Internet has been our best friend as we plan this wedding from afar, from showing j. what the Old Mill looks like to finding ring designs that we both would be happy wearing for many years to come.

I’ve mostly steered clear of those generic bridal clearinghouse web sites, places like The Knot and the Wedding Channel (there are tonnes more) because a) the sort of wedding they depict and cater to is not the sort of wedding I want and b) the vendors listed are either way too expensive or they don’t rate the vendors because they are paying to appear on the site.

I somehow found Frugal Bride the other day, and although it’s got a garish front page it is a Canadian site and it does cater to people who don’t want to turn their wedding day into an event that costs more than what they make in a year. The site includes an aptly named “babbling brides” bulletin board. Searching the posts there has helped me learn about what a florist costs (it can be a lot cheaper than I thought), that there are people as clueless as me when it comes to centerpiece ideas and even what people think of the Old Mill Inn and Spa as a wedding venue (it’s considered to have excellent food and service, by the way).

It goes against my non-girly nature, but I have gone so far as to include the site in my “rIAm reads” list. I do plan to continue to consult Frugal Bride to find out what people are babbling about, but I sincerely doubt I will post there. I’ll just save all that wedding babble for our dear PB site readers, whoever you might be.