Our wedding was a multi-state, 2-weekend party.
The actual wedding ceremony was held in Anderson, Indiana on May 2, 1998. We got married in St. Ambrose Church, which of course has its own WWW page. Penny went to elementary school at St. Ambrose.
Penny wanted some special music for her walk down the aisle, and she kept telling me about this fanfare that she remembered from an unknown source. As we were unpacking boxes of tapes and CDs after her move to Austin, she found the source of the fanfare: Dvorak's 8th symphony, 4th movement. Dvorak himself wrote a piano arrangement of the whole symphony, but neither it nor any other piano or organ arrangement is still in print. Penny even checked with the Dvorak Society in England. I was able to get a copy of the complete orchestral score, though, and I wrote a special arrangement of the fanfare and main theme for organ. Eventually I will put a MIDI file or audio sample of that arrangement here.
Some interesting trivia about our wedding date: Penny unearthed a print copy of the first email I ever sent her. The date of that email? May 2, 1995.
Here are photos from the wedding ceremony and reception.
A traditional, formal reception followed the wedding ceremony in Indiana. The reception was at the Grandview Golf Course Restaurant. The Grandview Golf Course is where Penny's grandfather took her to play her first round of golf. Here's the menu for the reception. In honor of the farmers of Indiana, we ate corn and beans. We also had cake.
On the morning of May 9th, we put on a shooting match. Ours is not just a 'shotgun' wedding - there will be rifle and pistol events too. Why a shooting match? Penny and I met when she signed up for one of my NRA instructor certification courses, and many of our favorite activities: teaching, competing, and hunting - involve firearms. So many of our friends in Texas are recreational or competition shooters that it seemed like a fun idea to put on a small match. We provided all the guns and ammo, and the match was open to the first 50 to sign up. There was a small fee ($15) to cover ammo and target costs, and all entrants got a commemorative baseball hat. We gave trophies in 'Professional' (ranked competitor), 'Amateur' (you own at least one firearm) and 'Novice' (new to shooting) classes, with subcategories for Women, Juniors (under 18), and Seniors (over 50). Here's the match results.
Here are the stage descriptions and photos:
The match will be held at Sanborn Shooters range in Smithville. As part of the match the range put on a firepower demonstration of various machine guns. Following the completion of the shooting match the range was for machine gun rentals.
Here are a bunch of pictures from the match.
To wrap up our wedding extravaganza, we threw a beer and BBQ party on Lake Austin. We rented the LakeSide Events facility on Lake Austin (here's the map). Rudy's BBQ did the catering (here's the menu), and Java Jazz will be performed a mix of jazz, funk and R&B.
Here are a bunch of pictures from the party.
We've delayed our honeymoon for awhile.
