I've decided that the Dallas airport is just a bad idea for me. I think I've only ever flown through it twice. The first time was coming back from Christmas at home last December. After sitting on the airplane for 2 hours, waiting for the thunderstorms to abate so that we could get into the air, we were told to get off the aircraft and back into the terminal, and to keep away from the windows when we got there. Long story short, a tornado ended up hitting the north fence of the airport while I was there. Fortunately it missed the runway (not to mention the terminal), so I finally got back to San Diego that day, only about 5 hours late.
This time it was thunderstorms again, but apparently, for legal reasons, the Dallas airport doesn't make people sit on airplanes waiting to take off anymore. Instead they just start canceling flights. On Memorial Day weekend. Yikes. But by some twist of fate, my connecting flight to the Harrisburg airport was delayed more than my flight from San Diego, so I was able to make it to Harrisburg, only 3 hours after I was supposed to.
The next day, we drove from Harrisburg to Allentown, where the wedding was held. We stayed at the Bear Creek Lodge, which is where the reception was held (conveniently!), and which is apparently a ski resort in the winter. Pretty neat to see the cleared ski runs in the summer. At any rate, it was a really nice place. They had Otis Spunkmeyer cookies at the reception desk, and my family managed to consume a number of them. The decor was also really nice, which mostly monochromatic, brightly colored walls with some tasteful decorations.
I would have liked to explore the area, especially the bare ski slopes, but we didn't have much time before the wedding. So we all got purdy and drove through downtown MacCungie to get to the church on time.
The ceremony was beautiful, as they always are, but I'm not the type that gets really choked up at weddings. Although it was sweet when the groom broke into tears while saying his vows, and the bride wiped them away for him. The pastor made a joke about how he sees more tearful grooms than brides these days during his sermon. He also tried to explain the "wives, submit to your husbands" Scripture in a feminist-friendly format, which kind of went over. I still don't really like that passage, but then, Catholicism has jaded my view of most of the Bible. Ah well. At any rate, both the bride and groom seemed phenomenally happy to be getting married, and I have no doubt that their marriage will last.
After the ceremony, it was back to the hotel room for a quick change of shoes (as a tall-ish girl I never really felt the need to master wearing heels for extended periods of time), then down to the reception. My siblings and I had brought backup alcohol on the off-chance that there wouldn't be an open bar, but we needn't have worried. The spirits were flowing, even before the room for the reception was opened. After having a couple of drinks and snacking on some hors d'oeuvres, we were allowed into the dining room and found our table. Joining all 6 of the Kardos family members at our table were my Uncle Lee and Aunt Cathy. Since Uncle Lee is well-known as a troublemaker (although a harmless one) in our family, we decided that our table was the "rowdy" one, and continued drinking in order to uphold that idea. Pretty much all of my family members, parents and myself included, got nicely toasted. (Note: all the photos after this point were taken with my point-and-shoot camera. No way was I risking the SLR in the state I ended up in.)
Here's my brother Neil, pretty early on in the evening:
And here's myself and my little sister Steph, also fairly early on:
Proof that my parents were drinking as well (even though my mother's father was there...):
And then there was the dancing. Although here I must note that I discovered my mom is a music snob. My father asked her to dance at one point, during a slow song that apparently wasn't to her liking, because she replied, "Not to this crap." It's good to know where I get it from:
We did the YMCA:
And the Electric Slide:
While my dad videotaped everything:
Then we decided to indulge in some other vices (that's a cigar behind my ear):
I even managed to take some upside-down photos that actually turned out okay, once rotated (first pic is older sister Rachel, her boyfriend Ed, then me):
By the end of the night, even my Aunt Linda (mother of the bride) was letting loose:
And the bride and groom were still on their feet, having a great time:
And that's when my camera's memory card got full.
A few minutes before the bar shut down (at midnight), a bunch of us went up and ordered multiple drinks, so we had a bit of an afterparty on the patio outside the dining room. Then my cousin Eric told us his dad was having the official afterparty in his suite - which was conveniently connected to our room by an interior door. Sweet! We ended the night up there, where we were surprisingly the youngest people in the room. I caught up with very drunk cousin Trevor, who was the one who introduced me to Mystery Science Theater 3000 way back when, and is thus directly responsible for giving me a lot of cred with guy friends, even to this day. Things get a little fuzzy at this point, and I think I went to bed shortly thereafter. The next morning we had brunch at Aunt Linda's house, where I ate a lot of bacon and drank a lot of apple juice to recover from my hangover. Then it was back home to Harrisburg to rest up in anticipation of a night out on the town there with my siblings and some of their friends.
To be continued...
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