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Pearl and Jerimy's Wedding The ceremony itself was supposedly beautiful, held on the beach in the late afternoon. Unfortunately, I was stuck in traffic for 2 hours and missed it. =( (see Masa's pictures for it... so pretty! *sigh* so sad I missed it... check out his pics!) After killing 90 minutes waiting at Borders for the reception to start, I grabbed my suit jacket and walked the three hundred feet to the Mariott, where I found people already there and appetizers, champenge, fruit punch, and a small bar waiting to serve us. Nessi, tall Jen, little Jen, Kipp, Marie, Den, Julie, and a majority of the people were already there. Made some new introductions to a few new people, then Pearl and Jer were ascending the steps to the reception! The seating arrangements, if there were any, did not apply to late additions such as myself, so I deposited my camera gear at an empty seat next to Nessi and started snapping pictures. True to form, Pearl's friends occupied two tables at the wedding, the wedding party occupied one (Pearl, Jer, parents and family from both sides), and Jer's friends had the remaining table to themselves (mostly). The reception was fairly informal, in direct contrast to the elaborate 200+ person affairs I am used to with asian weddings. It was both refreshing and slightly odd not to see people with large boxes full of alcohol under the tables. =D The speech from the best man was very fitting for the wedding, and Jer's family and friends are pretty cool. They took to being outnumbered rather well, I'd say. The only real difficulty of the night was getting people to dance, there weren't quite enough people for a critical mass. Okay, that, and as much as I love U2, not everyone wants to dance to it. =þ One of Pearl's friends had a really cool boyfriend too, although I forget his name (he races for G-Force/Honda in the IRL. Sweet!) The cake was quite yummy (strawberries and kaluha for filling!) as was the custard for dessert. The portable bar setup by the hotel outside the banquet rooms was also busy, as people kept disappearing outside to take shots with the bride! The low ceiling in the banquet room presented some challenges as well. The bouquet toss was relocated outside to the lobby, where Pearl tossed the flowers to her single ladies, standing a floor below. They bounced off someone's hands and straight into tall Jenn's hands. Jer's removal of the garter was rather brief (challenges! c'mon! more challenges!) and his toss missed the guys downstairs completely. Oops! Pearl described it as the girls moving away from the bouquet, while the guys all just stood there and watched the garter land about four feet short of everyone! Fun continued after the wedding... Pearl yelling out "last call for alcohol!" when we found out the portable bar outside was closing evidently worked! Downstairs at the bar (Pitchers) was some salsa dancing. Was being the key word. We arrived an hour or so before closing, where essentially zero dancing was going on. Had a few drinks with ___ insert names here ___ before they closed up for the night and people went back to their hotel rooms. Back up on the 16th floor, Kipp's idea of spitting off of the balcony caught the attention of our neighbors from Australia next door and from what I understand, they had a very good conversation as we waited for a few others to arrive. Most people were heading off to bed at this point... Bob, Sarah, Kipp, Julie, and I had other ideas. We headed off to the beach near Pearl and Jer's apartment so that four of them could play in the water and bodyboard! (I was stuck in my suit without a change of clothes and a 40 minute drive back to West Covina, so I did not partake. I wish I could have!) It was chilly outside, so the dived into the water. Nice. Very nice. (time to move closer to the beach!) As a bonus, on the way out of the hotel, someone left a mostly-full bottle of Bicardi to return to room service. Kipp snagged it. =) Back to the Mariott around 4:30am, where the valets had left for the night, so we had quite an adventure getting Julie's car out of the parking structure from the front desk. Amazingly I made it back home in one piece and still had energy to clean the spilled Gatorade in my trunk, and I even got to watch the sun rise before heading off to bed. Unfortunately as of this writing, I haven't really talked to anyone else about what happened the next day. Congratulations to Pearl and Jer!
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