Wedding Pics

Finally, slacker-Ken gets around to updating the blog and posting pictures...

My Julie and I have been married almost 6 weeks, yet it seems like just a few days ago. With Thanksgiving, the cruise, the snowfall, the norovirus, an extended Christmas break, and a wonderful week with kids here in Juneau... time has just flown right by. The adventure has been great, and we are happy to be here in this place.

Julie chose her best friend, Melody, to be her maid-of-honor, with Jessica and May filling out the rest of the purple brides-maid dressed side, while my brother David graciously agreed to be my best-man, and I asked two of my best Coast Guard friends from Portland, Russ Berg and Mike Rudolph, to even out the teams. We had chosen a wonderful location in Woodland, WA at the Lewis River Golf Course... a rustic timber, glass and stone room overlooking the river. Of course, at 7pm in November, it was dark... ok, it was pitch black. Meaning that lots of the pictures turned out, well, crappy. It really was beautifully decorated, with a ton of candles giving a warm, subtle glow to the affair.

We had a short but fun ceremony. For some reason still unknown to me, the entire room laughed quite boldly when I replied to the Reverend's question asking if it were my intention to marry this woman and I said with a resolute and confident reply, YES. Apparently, I could be heard downstairs...

And then the vows. Julie and I co-wrote our vows, and so you'd think that given the time involved and the magnitude of the event that we'd have no problem memorizing them. Not so... seems that both brains went to mush, the nerves failed, and so we relied upon the cheat notes to get us mostly through. I say mostly, because while I did mine flawlessly (if I must say so myself), Julie blurted out an interesting Freudian slip: rather than the previously agreed on "I am a better woman because of you," she uttered "I am a better woman without you." Realizing that it was nervous tension, everyone including aforementioned Reverend, cracked up. It was cute. This mis-step was despite the fact that an hour beforehand, Dave treated Julie to a rousing speech to calm her down and set the tone, which is to say, he told her, "relax, this is only Ken were talking about."

We were blessed to have lots of family and dear friends join us, coming from all over Washington and Oregon and Arizona and California. We hope that you all enjoyed the party as much as we did.

And to Mikey and the band, well, YOU GUYS ROCKED!!

With no further ado, here's pictures: