Get ready for an epic-length blog post. I got married, then had my honeymoon. So that's a lot.

Wedding: Superb. Everything went pretty much according to plan. We got off to a slightly slow start because I forgot my fancy underpants that go under the dress to make it look nice. When that's the worst thing that happens... you've done pretty well.

Anyway, first off: Julie showed up the weekend before and attended my rawesome bachelorette party. She brought an awesome mix-cd with a fantastic hand drawn polar bear winking, that said "Bearrorism" (in joke). The party was planned and facilitated by my friends Wendy, Diana, and Jenny. Wendy & Diana made postcard invitations with Cthulu on them (in joke). They are beautiful, I love having such arty friends. Esp. since they actually made a Cthulu pinata too! Jenny made tons of delicious food! We went to Curtis Orchard and we picked apples, my sister was there for that part too. And we stopped at Lake of the Woods and fed the Koi there. Then after Lori (sister) left, we ate a bunch and busted up the pinata that had candy and tastiness.

Then, the weekend of: Lothar, Pat & D, and Ryan & Brooke showed up. We had good times, and a tasty rehearsal dinner at Mandarin garden. It felt like we were at the "kid's table" because it was mostly us and our friends at one table, and then our actual family at another table. At the rehearsal, the 'Phew almost ran off after an ice cream truck, but did a serviceable ring bearer job. There were a ton of buckeyes around the field, and I was afraid of tripping on them, but Lothar decided to be our official Buckeye Commando and rid the field of them beforehand.

Then, the day of: wonderful! We got our hair & makeup done. The 'Phew wanted to get his hair done too, so he got a mohawk! It was so cute--I wasn't sure if Jeremy would like it, but he loved it too. They did a really good job on my hair and makeup, and my makeup, they actually sort of spray painted on my face, so it was nice and light and didn't feel all annoying like makeup usually does. The 'Phew was really excited about his mohawk and kept singing about it.

We got me into the dress, my photographer was super good, really fast, and incredibly nice. He even cleaned D's camera lens for her. We really liked him and made sure to give him good reviews, and Jenny is considering him for her wedding.

The weather was beautiful, so we could have the wedding outside by the bell tower like we planned. Pat put the fear of God into the 'Phew and he was really good at ringbearing after that, he didn't drop or tip the pillow and was as still as a statue during the ceremony. Pat's speech was awesome, and everything was very wonderful. Jeremy seemed nervous, but he told me afterwards he wasn't very nervous. He was very handsome in his tuxedo and I am glad I have lots of pictures of him in it!

The reception was inside Broadview, which is such a pictoresque place (both inside and out). It was slightly crowded, and one group of people had to eat outside, but otherwise everything went smoothly. It was really fun to see everyone and talk to people, and dance to the music I picked out myself. The caterer did a really great job with the food and cake, and our ushers set everything up wonderfully. Our flowers were beautiful too. Our best man gave a really thoughtful little toast that I really enjoyed. I guess since Jeremy and I planned it I am biased, but I thought it was the best wedding I've ever been to! And, of course, I was really happy anyway to be marrying my Jeremy! We were kind of sad when it was over, but we still had the honeymoon to go!

Honeymoon:

The first day in Rome Jeremy and I were super tired & jet-lagged from traveling all day the previous day, basically. We checked into our bed & breakfast in Rome, Hotel Golden. This was our absolute favorite hotel. As a B & B, it had a lot more character than a regular hotel, without being more expensive. They also had a really good breakfast every day. But most of all, the family that ran it was really nice and friendly. Before we even checked in, one of them had told us how to watch English movies on the hotel TV, find a place to buy metro tickets, find all the nearby metro stops, get to a nearby park, and how to get to all the good restaurants in the area. Anyway, that day, we slept for a few hours, went to the park, and then went back to bed. The park was really nice, it was enormous and had a lot of intriguing statuary, a fountain, a big clock, etc., a lot of old tall trees for shade, and little ice cream stands. I had my first gelato (italian ice cream, it's a little different than American) there. We had some really good food (all the food in Rome we had was really good) at one of the recommended restaurants. Oh, another thing about Italy in general: everyone spoke English (like even beggars), and lots of the signs had English as well. And the people were so nice to us, too. You hear all about how foreigners hate Americans, but it didn't seem like the people we ran into did.

Second day: the first half was a tour of the Ancient Rome area. I say area, because there are only a couple of places where the ancient stuff is really visible. Apparently the Tiber floods and covers things, leaves silt, which covers up existing buildings, and people just kept building things on top of them, so Ancient Rome is underneath modern Rome except for places where people dug it up, and mostly they only dug up the area round the forum. The Colosseum, which I guess was too big to be buried, happened to be in that area as well. The C. was impressive, I was glad to see it. I think it hit me that I was in Rome when we drove by it on the way from the airport, just like it was any other building, but it was the motherfucking Coliseum! It is sort of busted up when you look at it up close, especially inside. The barbarians sacked and looted it, people who wanted weapons hacked into it to melt down the iron framework inside, and various popes took out the marble stairs and other things to use as paving in other buildings. A lot of the ancient things we saw in Rome had been victims of this "recycling," as they put it. There's also part of the top missing, as most people can see even from pictures, thanks to an earthquake. But it's still amazing, that building has weathered all that and more, it's over 5,000 years, and I got to see it! The Romans really built to last... its so well put together that it didn't need the iron. They even earthquake-proofed it somewhat by putting sand and lard in the cracks between stones. They used good stone and strong arches. Which, though Roman's use arches in just about everything they make, because it is one of the strongest structures in architecture, we learned that they actually got the idea from the Etruscans, a people they conquered early on. That seemed to be another common thing the Romans did, learn from the best of what they encountered and use it themselves.

Then we had a tour of some crypts and catacombs, it was actually free, some other tourists had paid for it but didn't want to see it and Jeremy really wanted to. The first stop was the biggest catacombs (I can't remember the name, they have multiple catacombs). I wasn't that impressed--it's basically a burial ground for early Christians. But the barbarians busted it up, so everything was gone, just holes in the wall where bodies had been. The second stop was a temple where you could see the effect I mentioned earlier, with the Tiber covering everything. Because at the top was a 14th century church. It had been built on top of a 6th century church. That was built on top of a 3rd century pagan temple. Which was built on top of a 1st century building where grain was counted. It was really cool to see the different layers. There was even water flowing through the 1st century building you could drink, there was still a working aqueduct connected to it--and that's actually how this other stuff was found, a priest working in the church on the top could hear the water, and no one else could. He thought he was going crazy, and ended up digging up the floor to see where the noise was coming from. The last stop was this Capuchin monastery. They moved from a different monastery, and when they did they took all the previous monks who had died at the prev. monastery. They actually used their bones to make elaborate designs on the wall, and things as complicated as chandeliers. And after that, every time a monk died they'd do some process or other to clean up the bones, and they would go on the wall too. It was admittedly creepy, but it was a very interesting sight. They had lots of symbols and things, and in the last room they pretty much come out and say it: "What you are, we were. What we are, you will be." There were even children's bones (the family had donated them) to show that it doesn't mater what age you are, death comes for everyone. So basically, life is fleeting, make what you do count. There were also images of rebirth as well, because in the Christian faith, your death is only the beginning of your eternal life afterwards. I thought it was an uplifting message, and an interesting way to go about it.

3rd: The Vatican. It is hard to begin to describe everything I saw there. There are rooms upon rooms, and every pope since it was built has added something to it. For instance, Jean-Paul was nice and added a better entranceway for people to go in. Pope Sistus(sp?) created the Sistine Chapel (though it was a later pope who commissioned the famous ceiling artwork for it). And then there were popes who would basically put there name or coat of arms all over everything a previous pope made and pretend they did it. I esp. loved this guy who had a bee as his coat of arms (yeah not sure why, like Jean-Paul had an M for the virgin Mary, some other guy had a dragon, etc. etc. not sure why some other pope loved bees so much) who then proceeded to put bees on EVERYTHING so that people would think he did it. So if you go to Rome you'll randomly walk up to a fountain and see bees carved into it, or if you go up to half of the paintings or pictures in the Vatican, you'll see that guy's bees.

But some of the best places were: the Raphael rooms, paintings by Raphael that are pretty much the epitome of Renaissance painting. One painting of his, for the library, had pictures of basically the best teachers of everything. So, Alexander the great for military science, Pythagoras for math, etc. He put Leonardo Da Vinci's face on Socrates. He and Michelangelo were rivals, he worked on this painting around the time Michelangelo was doing the sistine chapel, and out of respect he actually went back in after M. finished the Sistine chapel ceiling and painted him in as the best artist to go in the painting. In the painting M. is wearing boots, because he was always wearing them and even took them off and threw them at Raphael once.

The Sistine Chapel, of course. The funny thing is: M. had never painted before that. He was a sculptor! But the pope had commissioned him for something else that didn't work out, and decided to make M. paint instead. Can you imagine being a sculptor who had never formally painted anything before and your first try ends up being the Sistine Chapel ceiling? I can see why Raphael was impressed. There are also some beautiful pictures on the sides of the walls that other artists, including Botticelli, made. One side is stories from the old testament, the other is stories from the new. The ceiling goes from God creating everything (including the famous Adam & God picture) to a scene where Noah accidently created wine and is drunk. Two of his sons are being jerks and laughing at him, whereas the other son is being good and covering him with a blanket. It is supposed to show that two are bad, and one is good, but because of Jesus, even the bad behavior can be forgiven and people can be saved. And at the sides there are pictures of prophets sort of leading the eye down to the pictures I mentioned on the side. She told us also how some of the first stuff M. did was smaller, because it looked good from where he was, but from the ground you can't see all the detail (esp. this dove that is on the top of Noah's ark). Then the other half (including the famous one with Adam and God) is large so you can see the details even from the floor.
There is another painting by M. of the last judgement as well; 30 years later they made him paint again even though he didn't want to. What changed his mind? A looot of money!

St. Peters Basilica: where to start?? The dome itself is just covered in decoration, it was done in the baroque style---which means not a square inch is unornamented. Bernini did so much sculpture. Michelangelo actually engineered the dome itself. It was supposed to be larger than any other dome in Rome, but is actually (though taller) slightly narrower than that of the pantheon, as the pantheon has a hole cut out the top that makes it stronger to do things like that. Also, nothing taller than the dome was allowed to be built near it later. This was actually a re-do, the orig. basilica was made during emperor Constantine's time, but the pope who tore everything down and rebuilt it was trying to erase the memory of a crappy previous pope from the infamous Borgia family. I hadn't known this, but it is actually built on top of St. Peter's grave. Christians had guarded his grave for a long time; didn't want people to know where it was and destroy it, but Constantine asked them for the information, and they let him build St. Peter's basilica there. Since then, archeologists have dug under there, and they did find a skeleton that was missing feet (as Peter was, because he was crucified upside down and his feet were nailed so much to keep his body there that they couldn't get his body off without cutting off his feet). There was a marvelous bronze altar by Bernini, it was made from melting down statues at the Pantheon. My favorite part of the basilica, though, was probably Michelangelo's Pieta, a sculpture of Mary holding Jesus after he had been crucified. I am really not religious, but I found this (and the other religious works I have mentioned/will mention) absolutely gorgeous and amazing.

4th: This day was a little lighter (thank god, my feet were killing me by then). We rode around the city on a double decker bus tour and got to see the city over all. We stopped off to throw a coin in the trevi fountain, and we also saw the Pantheon (this is one of the better preserved pagan temples because it was converted fairly early on into a church). We had a really nice, special dinner, including some Limoncello! Yum! (by the way, the food everywhere in Rome was really good!)

Next day: We spent most of this day on the train to Venice. When we got there, we walked around a little bit down the main street along the grand canal, did some shopping, and went to bed. Venice was nice, and picturesque, but it was kind of sad. There are very few actual natives living there anymore, the population is only 50,000. A lot of the buildings are in disrepair because it costs over 500,000 to get even the worst house (and millions for the really fancy ones), so no one can afford to buy them. Plus, with them being on those canals and all, it costs even more to fix them up and maintain them properly. But yet it was super crowded--because there are so many tourists who want to see it. And everywhere you went were street vendors in your face, very few real businesses just streets crammed full of hotels, souvenir shops, and restaurants. I think I would've liked to have seen Venice at its height. Speaking of height: it's also sinking, which causes a lot of problems as well. There were still nice bits too, though. We visited islands in the lagoon, they were less crowded. Murano had some sweet glass making factories, we got to see how it was done, and they had some beautiful & elaborate things made of glass. Burano has historically been known for it's lace, and we saw some of it at their lace museum. It also had a lot of random cute cats running around, we started calling it cat island. The houses were really pretty, they were much plainer than in Venice proper, but were all painted beautiful bright colors. Torcello was probably the least populated of the islands. They only had one cat, except he was much friendlier than the cats of Burano. He walked right up to us and let us pet him. We decided the cats of cat island made fun of him for liking humans, so he was kicked off to live on Torcello. But now he's the king of Torcello and gets to be petted by all the humans he wants. We had a "hidden Venice" tour of less famous things, including the "tits bridge" where the prostitutes used to hang out. Also we got to see the Friar's church, which had some beautiful works by Bellini and another artist whose name I can unfortunately not remember. We never had a gondola ride, mostly because Jeremy got angry at one of the restaurants--they charged us over 100 euros for a fish, which we did not expect. It was crazy--more expensive than the really nice place we went to in Rome where we got some fancy booze in addition to the meal.

Then we took the sleeper train to Paris! Unfortunately I caught a cold in Venice, so the first few days in Paris were somewhat uncomfortable--though I did eventually find some cold medicine, which made it a lot better. We did keep a rather light load though. The first day we saw the Louvre--that was exhausting in my sick state, but worth it. I saw the Mona Lisa (the most famous thing there) but I've never been a big fan. I did love seeing Hammurabi's code (I know I'm a nerd) and all sorts of art. The next day we saw a lot of Paris via hop on hop off bus, it is definitely the most beautiful city I've ever been in. I also saw Notre Dame and Sainte Chapppelle that day. Notre Dame has beautiful stained glass, and Sainte Chappelle even more so (S.C. is known for its glass and the glass is even more beautiful than N.D., though of course the architecture there is not as fancy). Then the next day we saw the Arc D'Triomphe and the Musee D'Orsay. I really loved Orsay, they have a lot of post impressionist art that I am into, such as Van Gogh and Georges Seurat. We also saw the Eiffel tower! It was wonderful, you can see everything from there. Jeremy got nervous (he's afraid of heights) and had to leave, but I certainly enjoyed it!

Lastly, but not leastly: Versailles. What a beautiful palace, but to my surprise, the gardens were even more beautiful than all the gold and decoration inside. First of all, they are HUGE, like way bigger than the palace which is of course large, being that it is a palace. And every inch had something interesting or beautiful to look at. I don't even want to know what it costs to keep it up!

Then we flew home! Anyway, I really liked Paris, it was my favorite. If you notice it's a little more lean on details: I kind of got tired after vomitting out this huge post, stopped for a month, and then resumed just now. So... the details aren't as fresh in my brain. Good times had by all!