Wedding Tour

A little while ago Ve-li asked whether I thought the wedding day is the most important day in a girl's life. I am not sure if I can answer this question because, as it turns out, prof. Grady and I have not been able to limit ourselves to a single day. We had our civil ceremony back in December and we are having our church ceremony and reception this coming Saturday. However, in between, there have been dinners and drinks commemorating the occasion. And, most recently, we've started what we now refer to our "Wedding Tour".

The first small group of family came over last week from the States. My sister Ina and her boyfriend Mike arrived from Germany over the weekend. Our friend Ashley flew in from Paris earlier today, Kyle's dad is flying in from San Fransisco tomorrow and so is Cristi, from Miami; Brooke will be joining us, fresh out of Siberia, on Thursday. What will follow is a week of more dinners, lunches, coffee-and-cakes, travel to Plovdiv, back and beyond.

It's been kinda crazy and in the meantime we've needed to finalize arrangements with the florist, the DJ and the printers. We also managed to squeeze in a little weekend trip to Istanbul.







People say that you don't marry a person, you marry a family and I always thought that was interesting but didn't quite get it. Now I know that it is true. And, that is more fun than I could have ever imagined. There are hugs and stories and new inside jokes we all get to laugh about...and things we collectively roll our eyes at. And shared taxi rides. And rude waiters we get to cuss off. And missed flights. And scary customs officials. And pretty views and mint lemonade. And the occasional leave-me-alone and i-love-you's...all the time...Mostly, I am surprised how real it all feels.

And, it almost feels scary to say it, but I am feeling that today I am really just having it all...