my brother's non-big fat greek wedding

I must mark this day on my calendar--not so much so that I can remember my brother's wedding anniversary as much as to commemorate a day when the world and my blog didn't revolve around what my kids were doing.

Very recently, at my birthday dinner in fact earlier this month, my brother Brad asked me, "What are you doing on the 22nd?"
"Um, I dunno, what day of the week is that?"
"It's a tuesday. Wanna come to our wedding?"
"Um.........yeah..........What?" ...is how I responded, I think.

It's not like I totally wasn't expecting a wedding at some point. Brad and Shadzi were engaged, and I was aware of that. For a really long time. They got engaged after he wrapped up working at the last Olympic games in fact, and before he left to cover this year's games they decided to (finally!) make it official. They opted out of a large wedding/party/reception/thing and decided to marry at (a nearby larger city's) city hall with only a few witnesses and a nice dinner afterwards. John and I were two of the four guests invited, along with Shadzi's sister Nikki and her husband, Victor.

I had the city decorate their lamp posts with plenty of flowers for the occasion. I hope Brad noticed and appreciated my efforts.


Before:




The pre-ceremony paperwork. Not a common thing for a wedding photographer (which I designated myself) to document, but then that's not a common haircut for a female either:


Set up, including getting my dad on speaker phone and setting the cell phone on the judge's book for the ceremony:

During:

After (no, I don't have any photos of "the kiss". I was taking photos with Brad's camera at that moment. I was also designated wedding juggler...toggling back and forth between his camera and mine. At several points John had my camera, I had Brad's, Victor had Nikki's camera and Nikki was videotaping, and all of us filming simultaneously. This was a small, but VERY well-documented ceremony.)

And way after. Champagne, wine, beer, shots, cocktails. And somewhere in there was a great meal, and more shots. We may have been a small group, but we didn't drink like one.

At some point in the evening either Brad and Shadzi asked, or more likely, John started offering them not entirely sober yet surprisingly coherent, marriage advice. And a less than sober Victor was particularly enthralled though I'm pretty sure he wasn't in any shape to retain much of what John offered. Brad and Shadzi's wedding day fell on Nikki and Victor's 9-year anniversary, and our 7-year was 3 weeks ago.
"Only seven years?" Shadzi clarified, visibly surprised, "I thought you'd been married, like, twenty years or something."
"It only seems like twenty," John and Victor agreed.
Meanwhile, I think I'm going to look into some cosmetic dermatology services at work.

Regardless, we all had a very good time.
Congratulations Brad and Shadzi!