Let us return to a day in the distant past: August 9 in the year two thousand and fourteen.  I had slept poorly due to a late night involving preparations and cake from my friends (delicious!); Sergey had slept poorly because I came to his room around midnight to give him a condolence card, waking him up.  He deserved some sympathy for marrying me, after all.  Despite the little sleep, I woke up fairly early thanks to my nerves and began to get ready.  This entailed thorough facial depilation, which took longer than expected.

I was running late, which not surprisingly caused me to do something quite dumb: attempting to carry my weak hotel coffee out of the bathroom with a handful of other supplies to be packed up.  Oh, and I was wearing my very white dress at that point.  You know what happens next: the coffee sloshes and dribbles down the skirt of my dress, to my absolute horror.  I ran to dab it off with napkins, and thankfully my dress had apparently been weatherproofed (and coffee-proofed) because most of it beaded on the fabric and came off.  But there was still a wet stain on the slip beneath the lace.  Poor Jasmine had to reassure me about ten times that it wasn’t visible before my panic was even slightly alleviated.

After a flurry of hair arrangement and last-minute packing, we were off like a herd of turtles.  We met Sergey, resplendent in his suit, waiting patiently in the hotel lobby for his belated bride, and then sped away to Wilmette in our vanousine.

Once there, it was a series of hugs and greetings.  Uncle Terry handed me my beautiful bouquet and I wrote out the pronunciation of the Russian vow and stuck it between the flowers.  Soon enough, it was time to take our seats onstage and enjoy the program, introduced by the Petersens, with music and readings by various dear friends.  And then came the vows.  I think we got double-married by saying the vows in two languages–that’s how it works, right?

I could give a run-down of the rest of our day, but I’m pretty sleepy, plus this is one of those times when images say it better.  I’m going to now attempt to post the beautiful video Mike put together of the photos he took.  So grab a coffee, put on your white dress, and sit back and enjoy!