Aloha! I do. Part Deux

It's been a few days since I've been back now, so I guess it's time to continue the saga of my trip to Hawai'i. I stayed at the JW Mariott Beach Club in Ko Olina. I thought I was getting ripped off when I ended up paying $300 for a guest room per night, but it actually ended up being really nice. To the left is the view out my window.

Weddings, as many of you know, can be very stressful for all involved, and this one was no exception. Well before the wedding day there was anxiety, anger, excitement, and tears. Some of the preparations weren't ready until hours before the ceremony. My jacket, for example, needed to be re-ordered because the place that measured me picked a size that was too small (apparently neck sizes vary by manufacturer as well, because I couldn't tilt my head, and I was just waiting to pass out in the shirt the tuxedo place gave me), and the jacket wasn't ready until two hours before the ceremony.

In the end, though, it went off without a hitch. Here's a picture of the location, taken from about a dozen floors above out the balcony window. You can see the gazebo in the upper-right with two approaches from the left and the right across the ponds (also note the Brown Ray taking a nap in the corner). The wedding party and the bride came down the left path, and the groom came down the right. There was a second of awkwardness while we figured out whether or not the attendants should pair up on the way down. There were three guys and one girl, and as much as I like my best friend's brother, I didn't want to link arms with him and be lead down the path. Still everything came out perfectly when the ceremony started and I have to say that as far as I can tell one of the only people who can take the credit for that is the bride. I've always looked up to her for having the common sense that I never had, but it was also her clear vision of what she wanted that seemed to anchor the flurry of emotion surrounding the event. Don't get me wrong; I don't think she felt like a steady force in the chaos, but that's what I saw. From the "Event Planner" that seemed to just say whatever it took to get her off the phone to the other family tensions to the exhaustion and lack of control of being 2000 miles from home, there were plenty of things that could have gone wrong.

It's funny though, somehow the seriousness of the event didn't hit me until I saw her mom leading her down the pathway to the flower-lined aisle. She looked beautiful, and I suddenly didn't feel like I belonged. I felt like someone more refined should be there in my place. I would have liked nothing better than to root from the background and take in the event from the privacy of the back row, but all the same I felt...proud. I felt proud of her to see how far she had come. I thought back through the relationships she'd had in the last fifteen years I'd known her and I had to catch my breath before the swell of my emotions overtook me. As it was I couldn't help but get misty-eyed, no small feat in painfully inadequate footwear and a constrictive shirt collar straight from the irritable bowels of hell. Part of me couldn't wait for the ceremony to be over so I could tell her all of these things, and part of me knew I would never be able to. The next day, when I finally had a chance to talk to her, I blurted out something so clumsy I hate to even remember it. In the end, that's why I was there though, and that's why she's my best friend in the world. She knows the things I can't tell her, and knows the context behind the things I do.

Oh, I almost forgot; here's a picture of the bride.