My Favorites: Day 20

My Favorite Wedding or Wedding Dinner

Although it is very easy to do, I don’t like comparing weddings. They are all wonderful in their own way, although I’ve been to quite a few that were oppressively hot, and no one likes to sweat. My sisters all had great weddings, and for the most part my friends have all had good ones too. But the best wedding of all time was the one where I was the groom!

My wife and I eloped in Jamaica. Actually, I’m not sure if I can say that we eloped, as we had planned it out ahead of time. In Jamaica, if you stay at an all-inclusive resort for three nights, you get a free wedding! How can you refuse a free wedding? We actually were down there for just over a week and we loved every minute of it. The beach was beautiful, the water was warm, the drinks were great, the food was amazing, and the goats were really fast, except mine.

You’ve read this much, why not…

The wedding itself was quick and quaint, and just what we wanted. The day of our wedding was the only day that it rained while we were there, and it rained cats and dogs:

The weather let up just in time for our afternoon ceremony on the beach. I’m going to choose not to say that we had several options for the location, and when we chose the beach location, we did not realize that the location was in the “clothing optional” portion of the beach. At least the weather was still somewhat nasty, so we didn’t have to see anything, well, nasty.

As I said, we eloped, so our hired photographer doubled as our witness, and our hired videographer doubled as a second cameraman. We gave him our camera, I think just to carry during the ceremony, and he ended up getting a few pictures that were just as good, if not better, than our photographer.

The wedding was quick, which was great, but the photo shoot afterwards was weird and awkward and included pictures of us cutting a beautiful cake that tasted wonderful and magically disappeared as we ate one small piece each. I think the workers there had a tasty feast in the back with our wedding cake.

In the end it was okay though because we had quite the feast afterwards. As luck would have it, we got married on the twentieth anniversary of the resort where we were staying. The meal they prepared was absolutely amazing. Jamaican jerk chicken and shrimp with pasta and other stuff. There was lots of other food but that was by far the best.

What’s missing? How about a pyrotechnic performance that involved dancers and saws and fire… it was actually very bizarre. But the band late into the night was perfect and my new wife and I listened from the moon-lit beach.

So, while I would have loved to have my family and friends by my side, I can say with confidence and without hesitation, which is a rarity in this Month of Favorites, that my favorite wedding and wedding meal was my own. Yeah, mon!

And just because, here I am in Jamaica on the same stage that the pyrotechnic dancers were on!

Oh, yeah, mon!