Last Friday, Mer and I left school early for a fun reason – our friends Matt and Clarice were getting married at 3:00. Clarice was in my Royal Fools improv group seven years ago, and so this was only the third student wedding that we had been able to attend (we missed one other because of a schedule conflict). What made this wedding particularly fun is that we have known Clarice for eight years and Matt for over two years (since he started dating Clarice). They are fun on their own, but they really shine as a couple.
Mer and I were a little anxious that they had a mid-March wedding, but we should not have been worried – it was a perfect day. It was sunny, and in the high 70s, and was just what a day for a wedding should be. Matt and Clarice had chosen to get married in a small building at the Hines Hill Conference Center, which sounds bland, but is a group of pretty stone buildings owned by the park service. The actual ceremony was on the second floor, in an open room with lots of exposed wood and a large fireplace. There were chairs for about forty guests, including a bunch of former CVCA students whom Mer and I were delighted to see again.
The ceremony was a fun reflection of Matt and Clarice. The pre-wedding music featured tunes from various movies like Star Wars and Jurassic Park, as well as other songs (like “Get Me to the Church on Time”), and Clarice walked in to music from the movie Willow. The wedding sermon referred to Clarice’s knowledge of wine and Matt and Clarice’s love of role-playing video games. Matt and Clarice’s wedding vows promised to love each other when they were proud of each other and when they were disappointed, which I thought was very wise – many times newly married couples fail to recognize that marriage can be hard.
The ceremony ended about ninety minuted before the reception so that there was time for wedding photos, but that was okay. Mer and I got to hang out with some of our former students, and it was a beautiful day out in a pretty place. Even once we left for the reception, Matt and Clarice had booked the library at the Sheraton hotel in Cuyahoga Falls as a pre-reception room with cheese and crackers and a small bar. Mer and I helped ourselves to a lot of cheese and crackers and visited with yet more people we had known from CVCA. Since the wedding had been at 3:00 and in a small venue, there were about twice as many people at the reception as had been at the wedding.
The wedding party arrived, and we shortly thereafter moved into the dining room for the evening. Dinner was served at the table, and was excellent. Mer found a stash of chocolates next to the coffee in the hallway, so she acquired some for us. Matt and Clarice had sat us at a table full of former CVCA students and one set of CVCA parents, so we were very comfortable there. Each table was identified by one of Matt and Clarice’s four cats, or by a duck or a guinea pig (Matt and Clarice like those animals). Each of the cat tables had a very cute picture of the cat in question, and we were seated at the Batesman table.
Matt and Clarice had their first dance before dinner, and then opened the floor up after dinner (and after they cut the cake!). Mer and I had grown tired of just sitting at wedding receptions because we did not know how to dance, so we started taking ballroom dance lessons about seven weeks ago. So, although we were by no means the smoothest dancers on the floor, we danced more than half the time. It made a fun evening into a great evening; we were able to join all of our fun-loving twenty-something friends on the dance floor without embarrassing ourselves, and that was happy.
Mer and I finally left at about 10:30, while the party was still fairly happening. I had a long run the next day, as well as the CVCA Auction in the evening, so we did not want to be out too late. Congratulations to Matt and Clarice!
