Amanda and I got moving around 10:00 today and decided to go have breakfast at Cracker Barrel. We drove separately so she could go get a birthday gift for her cousin, Hannah Frazelle, who just turned 17, and so I could get back to the house to work on Jon and Denise Green’s wedding pictures. I took the Market Street exit and Amanda turned by Wal-Mart. If it hadn’t been for the lights, I’d have beat her.

Anyway, after our brunch I headed on home. There was a wreck by the first ramp for the 420 exit and it was causing delays and odd traffic patterns. Someone in front of me put their brakes on very suddenly and I fishtailed a little when I slammed on my brakes. (It’d been raning and drizzling all morning.) Then it looked like they had my exit blocked off, so I thought for a minute that I was going to have to drive about six miles further up Interstate 40 to turn around. That ended up not being the case; they just didn’t have it marked very well for where you could turn off.

I played with pictures for a while and uploaded quite a few to show Jon and Denise Green that progress was actually being made on their pictures. Somewhere in there I got an e-mail from my aunt, Robbie Horner. The 1997 Oldsmobile Cutalss Supreme that is colloquially referred to as “my car” is being bought from her. I had two and a half payments left, but she told me that as a house warming gift she’d write off the last bit, which was such a great surprise. It’s funny, because just a few days ago I was a little worried about my money situation because not a lot of billable work got completed at work this month, meaning my second check would be pretty small. But we don’t have to make any more car payments (on the one car) and I’ve got a couple wedding jobs this month, so I guess we’re being looked after.

Around 3:30 I started getting ready to go to one of those weddings, that of Ashley Kester and Cory Burell. It wasn’t supposed to be too formal, so I just wore some gray pants, a light green shirt and a tie. I tried leaving around 4:00, but my car, the one that was just claimed as paid off, decided it didn’t want to start. The battery is in an odd place, so we didn’t even really have time to jump it. I took Amanda’s car and she ended up being stranded at home all night.

I had a little trouble finding the place, Inlet Watch Marina I believe, at first, but it didn’t take me long to get there. I was still about half an hour earlier than I told them I’d be, so I took some pictures of the place and waited for people to show up. They had ended up having the rehearsal this morning because Cory, the groom, wasn’t able to get to Wilmington until late last night. The great thing about that was that we were able to get all the group and family pictures beforehand, so they could enjoy their reception more. The weather worked out perfectly for us, because it was supposed to storm pretty bad. It was overcast (which made for nice lighting), then it rained pretty hard for a few minutes, stopping just before 7:00 and giving a few guys (and myself, as I volunteered) time to wipe down the seats for the outdoor ceremony. It was pretty, but the gnats were bad. Someone even had a bottle of Off that they were passing around, and that definitely helped.

So, even though they saw each other before the wedding, it rained on their wedding day, so my thinking is that any bad luck incurred was cancelled out by the good luck of the rain.

I stuck around there until about 9:00. It was a very laid back wedding and the people were all real nice and outgoing. A few months back, I had been dropped off at the house after dropping off the Jetta for something or other (probably to have the XM radio repaired) and the guy driving the courtesy van was from Beulaville and knew Phil Mercer, my father-in-law. It turns out that he was Tiffany’s grandfather (if I got my family lines straight). Tiffany is the reason I got to do this wedding; she saw the pictures I did for Amy and Ben Farmer, told her dad about me, her dad is the fiancee of the mother of the groom. So, Amanda’s best friend’s other best friend’s father’s fiancee’s son was the groom. That’s convoluted.

I got home and started downloading the pictures. Amanda hadn’t done much while she was stuck at home for five hours, although she did put some clothes in the washer. She said she didn’t do anything with the downstairs bathroom (the next one to be painted) because she doesn’t know how to spackle and didn’t want to mess anything up. Oh well.