Awwwwwww, what a nice day for their wedding!! I was a little worried in the a.m. with the cloudy skies but I just kept saying, no worries, it will burn off. And burn off it did into a glorious early Fall day! The place was easy to find and much closer than I realized - about 20 minutes down the road. This was convenient since I was in such a lazy, putter around Sat morning space. But I got there with plenty of time to spare and at the perfect time - party was full but there was still time to relax, get a drink and mingle before things kicked off.

The wedding and reception was held at the house of one of S&J's friends out in the boonies of Barrington almost at the end of this very, very long dirt road. Yes, I live 20 min from the boonies and 20 min from a medium sized city - nice place to be ;-)! Anyway, they asked us to park down the road at a baseball field so we had to hoof it for what felt like close to a mile down this dirt road through some beautiful NH woodlands (only one or two other houses along the way). I met Sab and her family in the parking area so we all walked down together and we joked along the way that this was S&J's ecotourism wedding. It was lovely but admittedly not the most comfortable "stroll" in semi-fancy dress trying to balance a cheesecake.

The grounds around the house were very lovely and they had it decorated in an elegant sort of New England Fall meets Renaissance. And there were chickens running around!! They have a fun and eclectic group of friends and family. All very friendly. People were dressed across a very broad spectrum from fancy dress to khaki shorts and t-shirts. They had two kegs (woot!), an open bar and about four tables of food that all contributed to. I totally ignored the orders of what to bring (based on name) and chose to go with a scrumptious cheesecake with passion fruit curd from the amazing Beach Pea Bakery - all natural ingredients, hand made and to die for. That sucker was gone in the blink of an eye!

They finally announced that ceremony was about to begin. A small sort of goofy band did somewhat of a prelude to warm up the crowd by playing a cover of Journey's "Small Town Girl" which had the crowd laughing and whooping. The ceremony began with Sacha processing to a lone bagpipe player and I could feel the waterworks starting to turn on (yes, I am a wedding weepy gal ;-P). Sacha looked beautiful in a a full length light blue Renaissance gown and she wore one of the necklaces we bought together on our shopping trip! Jimmy looked quite handsome and remarkably relaxed! One minor bummer for me (and most of the people in the back) - the front people remained standing through the entire ceremony (I think they got so excited they forgot to sit back down!) so we couldn't really see or hear anything of the actual ceremony. Wah!

After the ceremony was over the feeding frenzy began - I kid you not, it was jungle warfare trying to get at the food ;-P! I'm thinking most people skipped lunch and were pretty ravenous by the time the plastic wrap was removed from the goodies! So much yummy food, I only sampled probably a third of what was there if that!

I spent most of the reception chit chatting with people, grazing and being entertained by various and sundry performances sprinkled throughout the afternoon. Lydia did a dance for the bride and groom which was lovely. They had a little puppet show "roast" of the bride and groom that was very funny. Later they showed this short movie of random people around Dover giving advice to S&J about marriage - these weren't people that the couple knew particularly well, they were like the beer delivery guy and the guy at the public works (who told a bizarre story about getting his fishing hook caught in his wedding band - gah!). It was pretty hilarious! Then Sab and I planned our sneak belly dance attack with the help of the best man. It started with Sab dancing as a surprise performance and then all the belly dancers who were there as guests came in one by one and we got Sacha up to dance with us. She was really happy we were all there to dance for her and with her.

After that I was pretty exhausted so I suggested Sab we take our leave. We said our goodbyes and headed out on our long hike back to the car.

All in all a really great day!

Congrats and best wishes, Sacha and Jimmy!