Graig and Rachel's Wedding

Jud and I spent the weekend in New York/New Jersey for one of Jud's high school friend's wedding. Graig and his (now) wife came to our wedding 7 years ago. The weekend was amazing. I was not prepared for the lavishness of an "Italian New Jersey" wedding. I was incredibly underdressed (2:00 wedding on a Sunday - I was thinking church dress. No - everyone else was in formal dresses and black tie - fortunately I was dressier than Sunday dress, so it wasn't too obvious, but I LOVE formals, I would have had a lot more fun shopping if I had known). Anyway...The bride is Jewish and the groom is Italian Catholic. The ceremony was very nice. The Cantor (that is what he was called - I don't know how that is different from a Rabbi) would say (sing) a part in Hebrew and then the Priest would translate. Or at least that is what I assume they were doing. At the end Graig broke the glass. 

After the ceremony we went into an adjoining room for the cocktail hour. There was an ice sculpture. Open bar, ridiculous amounts of food - good food too - and expensive - duck, lamb, pasta station, chinese station, fruit and cheese station, to name a few. We all thought that was it for the food and we were going to go into another room to dance after the cocktail hour. Nope. After that (when we were all stuffed) we went into another huge room where we were seated at tables for a three course sit down dinner. I had the prime rib. We were seated at a table with most of Jud's friends, and had an awesome time talking and dancing. And did I mention there was an open bar?

Four and a half hours later we headed back to the hotel. Most of the people who came were local, so very few people stayed at that hotel with us. Graig and Rachel spent the night there and asked us to come up to their room. We figured there would be lots of people there, but when we got there it was just the two of them and Rachel's brother. We had a nice time talking, although we tried not to stay too long. 

Unfortunately, I can't go on a vacation to a cold, dry location without getting horribly sick. We had plans to go to "the city" all day Saturday, but I spent all Friday night and most of Saturday morning sucking down cold medicine and blowing my nose. We decided a day of rest would make more sense than a day of walking around New York. We had gone out Friday night with a friend of Jud's from his Belgium days, Gilles. (Gilles was also in our wedding and now lives in New York, about 15 minutes from New York City). We had to drive through the city to get to his house. I got to meet his parents and two of his 7 siblings. So I saw the skyline and drove over the George Washington Bridge. That counts for a trip to New York, right?