Dental Floss and a Catholic Wedding

I’ve been meaning to do an update like this since last Monday, but never got the time. So here it is now. I’ll get to the subject below.

The Shower

We had our wedding shower last Sunday. The joke has been that because so many couples recently got engaged, and their weddings were happening before ours, that we should try to have our shower first so people can still afford to give us gifts. (They won’t have any money left by the time they go to the four other weddings before ours.) Well, it was a fun shower. We got quite a few very nice gifts, including silverware, a pot, a lamp, and my personal favorites; a toolbox, screwdriver set, and the Space Ghost, Coast to Coast Volume One DVD! Ahhh, good times. Our friend Amy is now to be called Batmantis. That’s her in the middle.

Phantom of the Opera

For my birthday Jodi took me to see Phantom of the Opera at Bass Concert Hall. That was an impressive show! The set was bigger and more elaborate than any of the other large productions I’ve seen here. Jodi got the tickets several months ago, and scored 4th (yes, 4th!) row seats in the center section. Wow. It’s a whole different experience that close. You can see facial expressions, and hear things that aren’t microphone-powered. Thanks Jodi!

Pappadeaux’s

Anthony’s birthday is close to mine, so we had a joint (no, not that kind of joint) celebration at Pappadeaux’s seafood restaurant on Thursday. Pappadeaux’s is a very popular Houston-based chain, and very very good. I had the mahi-mahi with shrimp and dirty rice. We had about 10 people there altogether. I was reminded why I don’t like oysters when I tried Daniel’s. ugh.

A Traditional Hispanic Catholic Wedding

Jodi and I were invited to her co-worker’s wedding on Friday night, so we went. It was in East Austin, on a very cold, drizzly night. There were a grand total of three caucasian couples there (the bride’s name is Lopez and the husband’s is Gonzales), so I was looking forward to seeing what traditions we might experience that we hadn’t seen before. I had been to a traditional Catholic wedding before, so I knew there would be a lot of liturgy with standing, sitting, kneeling, and repeating-back. There was. The bride read her vows in the husband’s native tongue; spanish, and the husband to his bride in her native tongue; english. About 70% of the ceremony was in spanish. I really enjoyed the mariachi-style worship music. The band was quite chaotic in their style. I really enjoyed it, because they played from their hearts.
We saw and ate the cake that we will have at our wedding (they used the same cake-maker). It was yummy. I have no concerns. They used our same photographer as well. She seemed to be doing a fine job, although I didn’t get to see her during preparations, I did get to see how she worked at the ceremony and reception. The couple had apparently instructed her to be all over the front of the church during the ceremony, but Stephanie isn’t usually that forward at weddings. I think she did a fine job getting the pictures they wanted and still not being a distraction. No worries here either.
The reception was fun too! They had it in the capitol building (which is quite common, actually, as their prices are very reasonable). We had a great traditional American meal; chicken, turkey, noodles, salad. They had a mariachi band there as well. These guys were the best mariachi band I’ve ever heard. I was very impressed. They did not serenade our table, but did quite a few of the others.
Ok, now the funny part. I bought four dress shirts over the holidays, and so far have only worn two of them. So, I picked one of the ones I had not yet worn for this wedding. We were running a bit late, so I decided I would just change in the truck and meet Jodi at Deep Eddy Pool so we could carpool from there. When I got there, and started changing, I realized my sleeves were very long. Turns out the reason they were long was because they are supposed to be folded. Turns out the reason they were supposed to be folded is because that’s what you do with shirts that require cuff-links. Guess what I did not have with me? Yup. So, in the process of brainstorming, our best idea was to use the dental floss Jodi had with her to tie the button holes together on each sleeve. It worked great! I don’t think anyone noticed! Hilarious! One of the things I love about Jodi is how she squeezes her eyes shut when she genuinely laughs. She did that a lot.
ta-ta.