Thanks again everyone! ;D Well I still don't have pics yet, the photographer said it could take up to a month after the wedding (the 16th) seeing that she's sort of in a different country and everything so I figured I'd give you all a play by play for now. Okay? Okay.
I flew across the big wet thing we call the Atlantic on a nice big jet with a bunch of other people. It took 8 hours or so and I watched a lot of movies and tried (and failed) to sleep.
The Dress was my only carry-on and let me tell you, it was rather unweildy in it's opaque taller-than-me garment bag. My arms got rather tired rather quickly. But it made it unscathed so that was good.
We landed in Rome found our luggage (yea it made it!) and followed the signs in English no less, to the train station outside the airport. We rode a train into Rome proper which took about 40 minutes and got off at the Termini train station which is the major train/bus/taxi hub in the city.
We found our hotel
www.the-beehive.com/english.html after getting a bit lost, me hiking this big white bag over my shoulder. It was a sight I'm sure. Check out the hotel's website. It was...different let me tell you. Ask me about the "Karma Cafe."
We tooled around a bit, rode in a cab driven by a CRAZY ROMAN DRIVER (all the stereotypes are true! they're crazy!) and saw the Colosseum. Wow. Just...wow. You don't fully realize that you're in Rome until you've seen that thing.
www.flickr.com/photos/flappingwings/46336372/ Very cool. We then crashed and slept for oh 14 hours or so. Good times.
We spent the next few days figuring out the Metro, touring the Spanish Steps, the Forum, the old Palace, and walking. A lot. I had to figure out how to say "moleskin and new shoe in soles" in Italian. Oh and we more than ate our weight in pasta. Dear me, the pasta. From street vendors to cafes to fancy schmancy restaurants, the food was
amazing. I love Italian food here but it simply does not compare to the real thing. I wanted to take a few chefs back home with me. Oh and their fresh ingredients.
Eventually, the day arrived. We first gathered all of our friends and family together and we had a "rehearsal" dinner. I'm not really sure just how much food and wine we put away (they wouldn't let us see the check) but it was a lot. And there were only 7 of us.
I then left my fiance at the Beehive with the awesome hotel cat Ingmar and went to stay with my mother and matron of honor in their hotel. After not really sleeping at all I woke up early to get my hair done.
Now the hairdressers I talked to in the US for ideas said to give the person doing my hair 3 hours or so because A. apparently I have enough hair on my head for two people and B. it's down past my shoulder blades. So I scheduled the appointment for 10:30, the wedding being at 6 pm that evening.
I get to the hairdresser and I know I'm in trouble. The place is clearly super high class.
www.maurolulli.com/home.html Mauro Lulli. Yeah, I'd never heard of him but there was a video of him playing in the main room of the salon doing what looked to be hair for a high class fashion show. Yeah it was pretty fancy.
Mauro was actually quite friendly and spoke far better English than my Italian. Of course he then confused me by asking why I showed up so early when my wedding wasn't until that evening. He then proceeded to preform some sort of voodoo or something on my long thick hair transforming it into some sort of coif that belonged on a beauty queen or something. Certainly not Fiend. Oh and it only took 32 bobby pins of various sizes and something that looked like a bungee cord for hair. That's all. Oh and it was done in 45 minutes.
So there I was with my hair done up in my wedding 'do while I myself was still in jeans and a white button-down shirt. Oh well. I took my best friend to see the Colosseum again. The guys dressed up as gladiators to trap tourists liked my hair.
Oh that's another thing. Avoid the cheap crap vendors. You don't need any of it. Trust me. ...except for the guys selling fashion scarves. I bought a few of those...
So I hung out and walked around with my best friend through Rome. We ate gellato.
Another thing. Gellato is awesome! Sooooo good. It's not really like ice cream at all. It's hard to describe but it's sort of like more solid whipped cream. They use something that looks like an ice scraper to put it in cones for you. Very different but very good. Oh and how come Americans haven't embraced Nutella like everyone else? It's delicious! Anyway.
I waited til 430 or so to get in the big white thing. I didn't want to get dressed too early because well, corset. I like breathing. Breathing is good. I wanted to be able to breathe for as long as possible. But finally I put it on. With much help/snickering from my mother and best friend. There's a good pic of me leaning back on the bed looking like I'm just trying to breathe. I'll try to get that one scanned.
Dress first, then makeup. I was teh pretteh!
Once I was all fancied up along with my snickering matron and mother (taking time out of course to reassure my sniffling mom that it would be all right. Moms.
) we went to the front desk of the hotel to pick up the flowers. And oh yeah, I got the stares. Good times. The flowers were white orchids. Very nice. They smelled
awesome.
Then the photographer showed up and began taking pre-hitchin' pics of just me while we waited for the wedding to start. She made me do all sorts of strange poses (let me tell you, you're not at your most graceful in a big poofy wedding dress, corset and heels despite what you make look like) but I'm sure they turned out fine. I hope.
5:45 came around so I figured it was about time to head down and have a few words with Pastor Eric before my fiance showed up. (the hotel my mom and matron of honor were staying was on the 4th floor of a building. The Methodist church we were getting married at was on the 1st)
The service sounded straight forward enough so I decided to go stand outside the big main doors of the church while my friends and family played interference should my fiance show up where he's not supposed to be. There was no real place to stand and not be seen except at the front (yet unused save on Sundays) doors of the church. I got some whistles and cheers while I stood there.
Only my fiance wasn't showing up. Yup. He wasn't
quite late but it was close. Turns out that there was some sort of labor union strike going on and the protesters had a few major traffic routes shut down. My fiance and his father called from the cab.
But he made it. And I did my little walk and
we got to sit down at the altar! Yeah, you read that right. Unlike in American weddings apparently in Italian ones the bride and groom get to sit on these fancy little benches while the service goes on. It was rather nice actually. It made me appreciate the sermon more. (which was a good one about the unity of religion and how we as Americans could get married in a church in Italy without problem. Well, lots of paperwork but yeah..) And that was that. We were hitched. Big smooch at the end. More pics. Crying moms. Good times. And then I thought I was going to die in a fiery collision of metal on metal.
To be continued...
Just kidding! Obviously that didn't happen. But here's the thing. We had to get across town to the Colosseum to take pictures. And the aforementioned labor strike was going on. So getting across town in good time meant riding with the craziest Roman cab driver we could find on short notice. And that's saying something. 80 miles per hour on residential streets, wrong way driving on one-way streets, yeah. I kept saying to myself "well at least you got married before you die." Yeah, it was a big scary. But a bit thrilling as well.
Needless to say, we made it. Pictures were taken. And not just by the photographer either. I became sort of a tourist attraction. Lots of random people took pictures of me. That was a bit weird.
The pics will be shown once I get them.
Afterwards we braved traffic once more to get to the after wedding restaurant, ironically named Gabriello Ristorante. (that being ironic because my name is now Gabriel.)
www.ilgabriello.it/The entire staff, kitchen and waiter must have come out to greet me as I came down the very steep stairs to the restaurant. I couldn't see my feet! They all cheered and whistled and said "a hundred years" ie a hundred years of happiness. It was pretty cool actually. And again, lots of really good food and wine. Good stuff.
And then. The new hotel.
www.grandhotelplaza.com/ Now I had booked this months ago. I ordered a nice suite, not too expensive, but nice. And then a conference or something arrived in Rome. The hotel needed our room. So. We. Got. Upgraded. In a Four Star Hotel. Yeah. Our room had a balcony you could put a dining room table on. It had an upstairs. An upstairs! And count em' three bathrooms. Yup. Three. By far the fanciest hotel room I've ever stayed in.
And then we woke up and found that our train tickets to Paris had been lost. But that's another story.
-Mrs Fiend