I'se all married up. Warning: ahead lie paragraphs and paragraphs of random self-absorbed impressions of the wedding and surrounding festivities.

The ceremony was more moving than I expected; not that I expected it to be sucky, or anything, but, not being of a particularly religious bent, I'm generally fairly bored and squirmy during weddings, up until the vows/kiss, when tears and snot suddenly gush forth from my upper orifices.

I didn't end up crying at the parts that I expected would have that sort of effect. During the rehearsal L and I got all weepy during the vows, which seemed like a pretty obvious sort of spot to do some sniffling. During the actual ceremony, however, I was stone-faced and manly through the vows, but burst into tears as we exited down the center aisle.

I felt drunk, the euphoria was so intense. We went running out the back doors of the church, briefly said hello to Holly and her month-old baby Jack who had gone into the foyer to deal with some crying issues, and then we burst out the door into the rain and went running giddly down to the parish hall for the reception, giggling like little kids that were out of school for the summer.

The wedding moment that I most regret not having a picture of is of Laurel, holding her train up above her knees with both hands, running and laughing down the sidewalk, her tiara twinkling in the light of oncoming headlights piercing the rain down 35th Ave.

The night before the wedding, I remember going to bed and lying next to her, thinking if I die tonight, I would feel like my life meant something, like it wasn't necessary to regret. That's probably the first time I've been able to say that. Obviously there's more I want to do with my life, and buying the farm at 31 would be fairly poopy. Still, it feels different. I feel like every day I get from now on is gravy. Mmm. Gravy.

There were five days of festivities with friends before the wedding, and in the end I feel like that was exactly the right way to go. I actually got to talk to some of the people who flew thousands of miles to be here for the shindig. I even got to have fairly reasonable conversations with most of them.

Oh my God, the toasts. Laurel's dad gave a very sweet toast, and got us both choked up. My dad really pulled it out and gave a hysterically funny "engineer" toast quantifying Laurel's wonderfulness via the unusual unit of camels (Laurel's wonderfulness is over 5000 on the camel scale, in case you were wondering, which is a whole very long story in and of itself).

Heike brought up the phone conversation I'd had with her just after one of our first dates, which I'd completely forgotten about, where she predicted great things with this particular lady. Quite prescient.

And John just reduced us both to sobbing piles of nice clothing, with a toast that was just too beautiful for me to paraphrase here.

What friends. What a lucky man I am.