Wedding Day, Sunday May 17, 2004

Sarah and I were married on Sunday, May 16th 2004. We called our respective parents over to the house for 11:30 a.m. After a few agonizing minutes of small talk and bathroom breaks, we got them into the living room and announced that we were getting married at 12:30. After the initial shock subsided, we all hugged each other and ran down to the beautiful gazebo at the end of Barrie St. (Newland Pavilion in MacDonald Park).

Our minister, Brian Yealland, arrived at the same time as us, our photographer, Natalie Carr, arrived a few minutes later. She is a childhood friend of my sister, who was Sarah's maid of honour. (Her partner, Jamie, was my best man.)

The ceremony only lasted about 15 minutes. It was perfect, exactly what we wanted. We then did some quick photos before we adjourned to the Brew Pub for lunch.

The meal was great, I had the East Coast Benny, Sarah had a Cheese Melt with a Caesar Salad. We had a few drinks, a few toasts, my father snuck in to pay the bill ahead of Dale, then we were off to Kingston airport. Once there, we went through a rather rigorous security check, checked our bags and waited with our parents for the plane to arrive.

The plane was an Air Canada Jazz turboprop that seated about 30. The ride to Toronto was amazing. I looked out the window the whole time. Sarah was nervous, I reassured her several times. She took it quite well, however. The steward, Fran, was quite nice. We talked to him about Pearson, he let us know how things would proceed when we arrived in TO.

When we got there, we had to figure out how to get our luggage. It took us a while. Once we found were the luggage was delivered to, picking it up was no problem! Ours were the only bags left. We got our bags and bussed over to Terminal 3. We then proceeded to check our bags (again) and find our way to our proper gate. When we did, we had about an hour left over. We grabbed a bite to eat, Sarah picked up a paper, and we hung out waiting to board the jet.

The jet was huge. It sat 220 people (3,3,3 in the middle.) It looked like a big white whale with a red stripe.

Waiting to take off was excruciating. Sarah and I sat in the outside two seats of the left hand side of the plain. We sat at the wing. The flight took about 8 hours, but two of those were sitting and boarding in Quebec. The plain was almost full.

We flew at 37000 feet, traveling at 1100km/h.

We arrived in Paris at about 4AM our time, (11:00AM Paris time.) We were tired and disoriented. We'd each had only about 1-3 hours sleep. We made our way over to the train station and, after some confusion, bought two tickets into Paris on the RER. We got to Gare de Nord at about noon (France time) where we found a telephone and called my parents. We called at about 7:00AM, (Kingston time) and they were both home. I talked to Mom, Dad, and Mom again, They were relieved and happy to hear from us. After I got off the phone, we spend another hour or two trying to find out where to go next.

We finally got metro tickets at about 1:00 p.m.. We were exhausted and hungry. I found a baguette sandwich and apple for under 4 EU so we split that as we made our way to more trains, our destination: the 2nd arrondissement (quarter). We stayed at the Hotel Des Boulevards on Villeneuve Ave. We had some trouble finding it due to us confusing Bou. Poisonniere from Rue Poisonniere, so we were exhausted when we finally did. After we got our key, we walked up 4 flights of stairs(!!) to the cutest little room in the world. We crashed on the bed and slept from about 3-5:30 p.m.

We eventually woke up and went out on the town. We ate dinner at 8:30 p.m. at Cafe Phoenix. I had duck, Sarah had a gourmet salad. It was delicious. The waiter, learning that we were tourists, gave us each a small glass of wine to sample. It was sweeter than I was used to, but was just the right thing.

We then walked around the neighborhood. It doesn't get dark in Paris until about 10:00, we walked around until dark and then returned to our hotel, exhausted. We talked about what do do the next day and eventually wen to bed at about 11:00.

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