Guess who's (not) coming to dinner

Saturday was the big wedding day! Zachary had again been displeased with the so-called hotel crib, and ended up sleeping in bed with us. It was impressive that even in a king sized bed, he managed to nearly push both Meh and myself out of it; I think he was sleeping diagonally by the end to maximize his space. This meant that he was again up pretty early. So we decided to get him outside once more, since the walks seemed to make him happy. We journeyed the few blocks from our hotel to the famous Carnegie Deli, where he was clearly exhausted and not particularly happy.

Two minutes later he was asleep in the little umbrella stroller, and slept through the whole meal - the juice we'd gotten for him was for naught (though he drank it later in the park). The waitstaff kept coming over to fawn over him. I was surprised by how empty the deli was, though then again, who's already up and out to breakfast at 8 in the morning on a Saturday? Since we hadn't been sure how long breakfast would take, we were actually already in our clothes for the ceremony, so we decided to wander up through Central Park towards the wedding venue. (Incidental trivia: Manhattan streets are apparently roughly 1/20 of a mile. Where I grew up, they were 1/12 of a mile. So whereas I was impressed that we eventually made our way up 43 blocks to the venue, it was actually just over 2 miles rather than nearly 4.) We had a nice walk with the little man, who was mostly happy, and kept getting distracted by passing dogs. We ended up making it up to the venue just in time for one of my wedding duties -- warning park-goers hanging out by The Pool that a wedding would soon be occurring.

The wedding itself was simple and beautiful; the family walked down from 100th Street and had a small ceremony by the pool. B and J had written their vows, and they both looked so happy -- everything was just perfect! Zachary was getting fussy after the wedding while the families were organizing lunch back down toward the hotel, and we were concerned about him getting angry in a cab (or waiting for a delayed lunch), so we popped into a local Ethiopian restaurant (blissfully empty, though the food was great) with friends V, S, and their twins, who had met up with us at the park after the ceremony, and Zachary enjoyed a lunch of grapes, cheerios, and quite a bit of injera, while the grownups caught up. Zachary eventually wanted to explore, so he crawled around the restaurant (occasionally stopping to pick up and eat one of the cheerios he had scattered - ew!).

After wrapping up lunch, V and S were gracious enough to drive us back to our hotel (they'd even brought a third carseat for the occasion!) on their way out of the city, and we visited with Zachary's grandma and bubbie for a bit before getting ready for the wedding reception.

The reception was at the glorious Bryant Park; there were photographs in the park followed by a cocktail hour on the roof of the restaurant, followed by dinner and dancing in the restaurant itself. Zachary fell asleep before the photographs (leaving all of Meh's wedding photos with him in the ergo on her front), but woke up at the reception and was getting increasingly unhappy/frantic. We took turns walking him outside and soothing him with a funky projected animated plant thing in the restaurant (don't ask), but eventually it got to be too much for him (and Meh), and they ended up having an early evening. Definitely appreciating the concept of the babysitter and baby-free wedding reception, which we'll make an attempt at this coming weekend with Zachary's last flights for some time, down to LA. The rest of the wedding was, though somewhat lonely without Meh, certainly a fabulous evening of dinner, dancing, and celebrations. The Michigan gang performed this classic tune for the groom. If you can understand any of it from this posted performance, more power to you.