Dateline June 16, 2012, James and Mary's Wedding in Gettysburg
After two weeks at home we are back in the Roadtrek. One of the projects this stretch was building a garage and a storage room in the old carport that opens directly into the kitchen. Here is where we left it.
The foundation blocks were down on June 13. We will post progress pictures as the build moves forward over the summer.
First stop is Gettysburg, for our son James's wedding to Mary Albin. Friday night we held the rehearsal dinner at The Appalachian Brewing Company, just up the block from some of the actual Gettysburg battlegrounds. Fortunately no battles broke out indoors between the wedding party and the parents.
It was a pleasure to meet Mary's family. Her parents Janet and Jim Albin are great people, and the whole family was lovely to spend the evening with. The "virtual keg" was an open bar with every beer the brewery makes available for the asking, which set up a long evening for some. We have no firsthand knowledge of the after-party. It happened well beyond our bedtime.
Granddaughter Izzy did everything in her power to be the center of attention. She mostly succeeded.
John made a toast to the couple, recognizing all the women in James's life. He started with his sister Kieran. Then his mother Rosellen. Then Maureen Corbett, who had been James's first teacher at Holy Child Academy on Long Island, and who, with her late husband Jim, had become some of the closest friends our family has known. (They had each left religious life, Maureen as a nun and Jim as a priest, before they married and adopted us all.) Then Janice. About six months after John and Janice married, Rosellen had had an aneurysm. The three children moved in with John and Janice, and Janice, who had never had any of her own, became their mother and never looked back. James, Kieran, and Courtney are her children every bit as much. And finally Mary, who, John noted, had finally tamed James, something the rest of us had been trying to do for years.
The five women in the toast, plus James in the middle of them.
Saturday was a beautiful day for an outside garden wedding. Mary's sister Shelly hosted a lovely brunch at her house mid-morning. After that we enjoyed a quiet afternoon at Codorus State Park, just outside Hanover, where we had camped. Around 5:00 we drove over to the wedding venue, parked the RV, and of course made ourselves a drink. We got out and immediately ran into John's sister Carol and her husband Parker.
Many of James's mother's family were down from Long Island as well, and it was good to see all of them. We made our way over to where the ceremony was set up.
Janice was one of the official photographers for the wedding, so she stayed busy taking pictures all afternoon and evening. Mary's brother John, who was deployed to Afghanistan, could not be there in person, but he was very much in the wedding. Her other brother Jim was on military reserve duty that weekend, and also unable to attend. Both of Mary's brothers were missed and honored.
The crowd moved over to the pavilion for the reception. A good time was had by all, and the dance floor stayed busy all night. When it came time to cut the cake, James told the guests about the Wilson family tradition of using his grandfather's sword to make the first cut. The sword came from Jack Wilson's ROTC graduation at the University of Washington in 1944, and was first used when Jack and Grammy were married. Every Wilson family wedding since has cut its cake with the same blade. James and Mary did too.
Dancing continued. John had a turn with James's mother and a turn with our daughter Kieran. And so it goes.
Our best wishes to James and Mary Wilson.
Next stop, Montreal.
