Benson-Trotter Wedding

So anytime any of the following things happen at a wedding, you know it has been a great party -

- The bride does a keg stand.

- The groom does a keg stand.

- Someone you don't know walks up to you, and says that the 48 bottles of wine, three kegs, 100 or so other bottles of beer and the half-liter of jagermeister is not enough alcohol.

- The groom hurries up the officiant by shouting, "Can I kiss her already?"

- The grooms "step-father" makes up a late night tub of hot dogs by filling an aluminum tray with beer, dumping hot dogs in it and then dumping it on the bonfire to cook ... its even better when all the girls go to town on the hot dogs.

- You learn that there is a new drink called a "truck bomb" - apparently an Irish car bomb for real drinkers, its a pitcher of guiness with a pint of half baileys/half jamesons dropped in it.

- The maid of honor decides, after the bride has gone to bed, that she is not celebratory enough and polishes off two bottles of wine by herself.

- Temperatures as low as 40°F do not end the party, which lasts until 2 or 3 in the morning.

- Breakfast the next day features massive amounts of bacon, hash browns and bloody Marys.

All of this and more occurred in just nine hours at Kate and Sam's fantastic wedding last weekend. The beautiful ceremony and fantastic party took place at Judy and Ivan's farm in Exeter, New Hampshire. I had never been to New Hampshire before, and it was every bit as picturesque as I had heard. The farm was fully decked out, as Ivan had made, by hand, everything from wedding arches to a outdoor powder room to an entire bar from scratch - a side note about Ivan, he is an artist whose preferred medium is wood and metal, and he is basically incredible. The wooden and metal objects (like the door on the left) he had built which we scattered around the farm were amazing.

We arrived about 2 hours before the wedding, just after making a pit stop at the New Hampshire state liquor store to pick up several bottles of relatively inexpensive scotch I had been wanting. We got to the farm, set up the tent and started chatting with people. The ceremony, which was pretty fast, started soon after and after a stream of colorful bridesmaids and groomsmen walked out, Kate was escorted down to Sam by her father. And then we all stood up hill from the beautiful birch wedding arch that Ivan made as Sam and Kate, stared at each other, smiling and became man and wife.

The wedding vow may be something that is entirely overdone in today's culture, seeing and hearing it everywhere, but when you see two people who are deeply in love share their own vows, there is something magical about it regardless.

After the ceremony, and the long ass receiving line, the party started and as I described above, did not stop until the bonfire was put out at 0230 am. Not that I was awake at 0230; nope, I have realized that I am a lot older and less fun than I used to be and I could not hang with either the Bensons or the Trotters. I had my eight or nine beers in the afternoon, and basically stopped drinking at about seven ... Aviva was taking antibiotics and never really got started, so we pooped out, happy, sober and freezing, after watching Ivan walk through fire and eating some fire-roasted ribs around 1130. Those ribs were just settling in the next morning when we got up and headed over to breakfast to cover them with a handsome helping of bacon and potatoes.

Overall the wedding was a blast, we danced, drank a bit, jumped around and I got to meet a couple of Aviva's old friends from RISD, as well as spend time with Kate, Sam, Jackie and Jackies new, awesome guy Dan. It was a fantastic time.