Thursday, August 19, 2010

Wedding day blues


So I have to confess that our wedding was one of the most intense experiences in my life, although not in the ways that I would have expected. There were many times during the day that I thought to myself “thank god I have experience running events through Toastmasters” as I was able to use my skills throughout.

As an aside, one of the great lessons that I took away from it all is an oldie but a gooder. You can judge the success of yourself as an individual by the work that people do on your behalf, particularly when unattended and when they need to use their own judgment. There were many details arranged quietly by my Mom and Ernie that I wasn’t consciously privy to but found out and agreed with afterwards. Similarly my groomsmen were exceptional. After the ceremony, I was immediately swamped with guests who wanted to pass on their well wishes personally. No worries. My groomsmen all disappeared and to be honest I didn’t really have an idea where they all ended up but I knew that they were doing good work. By the time I had made it through all the people (a couple hours, roughly) I found out that my groomsmen had assembled around the food tables and made sure that people were all fed. At one point there was literally three guys and three barbeques with burgers/hot dogs flying off the grills.

There were many similarly positive experiences before and after the wedding – Kev and I had to get a bouquet of flowers unexpectedly the morning of the wedding, Jon ripped it apart and rebuilt a proper bundle, Mike ended up shadowing the photographer and got a number of amazing shots.

One of my less favorite ex’s once said that you can judge yourself by the quality of the people around you, and frankly if true then I feel like I’m doing well.

No comments: