Dubuque is for Weddings

We had a great weekend in Mike's hometown, Dubuque, Iowa. We saw family and friends, but the main event was the wedding of his highschool friend Carrie:

She was a beautiful bride and my only regret, as it always is with weddings is that the bride was very busy mingling and livin' it up, not sitting and chatting with us.

But I am getting ahead of myself...

The wedding itself was very cool. I should have taken more picture of the beautiful interior of the Five Flags theatre in downtown Dubuque, but my camera is a little sad so we will have to be happy with this blurriness. The wedding party was large and diverse, not letting the sex of the person keep them from serving as a maid or man. Loved how it was fuscia on the brides' side and graphite on the groom's. Very classy.

The program was AWESOME, modelled after a play's program. It detailed all the wedding party's relationships to the couple in their "bios" as well as how the parents of the bride/groom met all those years ago. SO SWEET! Preshow music was fun too, love songs from various musicals, like "Ten Thousand Kisses" from Rent and "My Freeze Ray" from Dr. Horrible. It was great.
The only hitch to the whole thing, was they didn't practice the running/performing of the music pieces, so there were two points when we were all just waiting for the song to finish, although it was pretty. And it didn't get aggrevating because the wedding itself was quite short and sweet.
The wrote their own vows and through groom Aarron's started as a speech the vows themselves at the end were quite beautiful and made me tear up a little. HIGHLY unusual for me at weddings.

And after a bit of chatting it was time to head to the edge of town for the reception. I didn't get a picture of the outside, it was literally a gas station, but the inside was nice enough.

They made each of the table musicals and the placecards were actual show tickets. Very Cool.

The favors were these cute buttons. There was "It all started with a fish taco" and "Dubuque is for weddings" and "Don't slow down now, babies are next"

But the best part was hanging out and meeting more of Mike's highschool friends:

Here we have artist/wedding photographer Luke, HILARIOUS Thad and Bride's maid, I mean man, Nathan. I loved them all and am sad they all live so far away.

Then there were new friends to make like Thad and Bride's college bud Tyler and his wife Jessica. They were a TON of fun and give us another reason to go visit DesMoines Iowa.

The recpetion was over before we knew it, but the party didn't stop we went to local dive/kareoke bar for one more drink. It was delightfully kitsch. Although not everyone liked it...

Luke sat down, looked around and said, "Truly, this must be hell."

But we made the best of it, these two even got up and did a little singing, although Tyler was sabotogued by the words on the screen being ahead of the music BOOO! Poor guy.

Oh well we had a good time, met good people and wonder if we will ever see any of them again...