Recaps continue: Saturday Night Dinner

I’d had such a grand plan of writing up the details of the whole wedding process, bit by bit, more to document it for our own purposes, for posterity, than anything else. But now I’m feeling like that’s going to be boring and take way too much time (time that, although I might technically have in these long days of summer, still feels too precious and limited).

So, instead, perhaps I’ll just recaps some key elements of the weekend, along with some photos and links and videos. And I don't think it's going to be in any good sort of order.

Saturday Night Dinner

Although we weren’t able to have every single wedding guest come to the dinner the night before the wedding because of the perceived limits of our venue, we were at least able to have all the out-of-town guests come to the dinner. It took place at the Wisconsin Historical Museum in downtown Madison, a fitting venue given my academic leanings and our desire to have our friend Genya cater the dinner—many other places we looked required us to use their appointed caterer. Genya started Slow Food UW on campus, and shares our sensibilities about how important it is to eat delicious, local, sustainable food. Furthermore, she insisted that we not pay her directly, but that any money we gave her would be a donation to the Slow Food café she’s planning on opening on campus in the fall. So we were all in.

Her food turned out to be delicious, and it was so exciting to see the menu we’d prepared materialize before our eyes (and stomachs!) There were appetizers of roasted nuts, cheese curds, and crostini, some with apple butter and blue cheese, others with tomato and mozzarella. There was fresh sliced avocado, tabouli, green salad, sourdough bread, wild rice salad, raw veggies with homemade hummus, cabbage and potato pirogies, and quinoa salad (in addition to the roasted rosemary chicken and spanakopita we got from the co-op). And for dessert, fresh fruit and an amazing assortment of baked goods—from poppy seed and cinnamon cookies to fruit strudels and rich chocolate balls. It was all so good, and we were so grateful to have access to Genya, because she made it possible for us to feed our families and friends yummy food which showcased our love of creative vegetarian food (and we offered the compromise of the baked chicken, but I don’t even think it was necessary, except as a token to appease the parents).

Unfortunately, the only photo anyone seems to have captured is of the appetizers (if anyone happens to have other photos of the food--or of anything else!--that you haven't shared yet on our snapfish account, please do!):



After dinner, the even more delicious course began (if you can believe it): that of the speeches and songs and poems and performances that our insanely talented and thoughtful family (I’m just going to use that word inclusively from now on, to include everyone who was at our wedding, who are all family in the broad sense of the word) put together for us. It was pretty much two solid hours of tears and laughter and me visibly shaking with delight and emotion.

My brother and our good friends Mike and Deepani videotaped all the speeches from this portion of the evening, so I’ll try to upload them eventually, but for now, I’ll just say that among the presentations were a Dream Street-inspired skit by my oldest friends, heartfelt speeches galore, a little embarrassment from our parents and high school friends, an extended limerick, a beautiful song based off of Such Great Heights, a rap to the tune of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, a Christopher Walken cameo, and hugs and love and raw expression. It was all dream-like, and I floated around the rest of the night (and really the last month since then) on a cloud of support and ecstasy. Thank you.