A Wedding Day to Remember

No. Not my wedding. Although I'm sure that if that day ever comes it will certainly be a day to remember! However, that hasn't happened yet so I'll just go with what I've got. This story is about the wedding of Jon and Katriina Hopper. Actually, to be more specific, the day of the wedding of Jon and Katriina Hopper.

The date was August 17, 2002. It was a beautiful day in Upper Michigan. Sunny and 70 degrees. Perfect weather for a wedding! One catch. In Phoenix, MI that day there were wind gusts clocked at 97 mph. This made it very interesting and ended up playing a major role in the events of the day. The wedding was held at an Apostolic church in Laurium. The ceremony went well and a private camp on the shore of Lake Superior had been reserved for the reception. I think it was about a 15 to 20 minute drive out there to the camp. Not sure on that one though. I do know that I started to drive out there but knowing how easy it is for me to get turned around I decided to go back to the church and follow Jon's Dad, Charlie out there. Charlie and Jon run a web site (http://www.pasty.com/) on which they have pictures, web cams, bulletin boards and most importantly, they bake and sell pasties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasty) . They must be pretty good. They've shipped almost 480,000 pasties to all 50 states in the last 11 years! Because they bake them, ship them, and sell them it only stands to reason that Jon would supply pasties at the reception, and he did. His dad and I got everything together to take to the reception and headed out.

While we were en route the wedding party was getting their pictures taken and were late getting to the reception. They were late because a tree had fallen (http://www.pasty.com/discuss/messages/994/1470.html) across the only road they could use to get to the reception. (One of the disadvantages to living in an area with only two main highways, both going in the same direction) Jon and Katriina were the first to arrive because Jon just drove around it in his Jeep Wrangler. Oh to have a Jeep! The rest of the wedding party arrived soon after that. The wedding pictures taken at the reception captured Jon in rare form. The wind made it look like he had just rolled out of bed. I asked him why he had worn his tuxedo to bed and he said it was in case he overslept. :-) I guess he wanted to make sure he wasn't late! Good call, Jon!

After the reception ended I was helping to clean up and the power went out. Wind gusts off the lake were still causing havoc. We loaded my car with all of the gifts as well as some stuff that needed to be brought back to the church and headed out. (For the record, to that point, I had never had that much stuff in my Intrepid. The trunk was full as were both the front and back seats.) we arrived back at the church and started to unload the chairs and tables that had been used. As we pulled the first 8 foot table out the wind caught it and it moved like a flag in the wind. Had I not had a good grip on it, it would've taken off down the street. So we quickly unloaded the rest of the chairs and tables and then I had to drive up to Eagle River where Jon lived to drop off the gifts. By now it was dark and when I got to Jon's house it was almost midnight. As many times as I had been through there at night the days events were taking their toll. I was exhausted. The wind was still pushing some massive gusts and M26 had become a wind tunnel.
It must've been around midnight when I finally arrived at Jon's house to drop off the gifts. He and his wife were at a Bed & Breakfast and family that had come in for the wedding were staying at his house. Because of the late hour I figured that all the lights were off in the house because everyone was in bed. I was right...sort of. I had noticed that there was an oil lamp burning on the mantle and my thought was that it had been left on because it looked nice. It most likely had been left on for me but there was a bigger reason for it. The power was out. The oil lamp was on because nothing else worked. I walked in the living room and tried to turn on the light. It didn't work. I figured it was a blown fuse. I walked through the living room, into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator door before I realized the power was out. The ironic thing its that the whole town was without power and so the streetlights weren't even on. Yet it still took me having to open a refrigerator door to figure out he power was out.
In total I drove 100 miles that day but given the events of the day, the uniqueness of it, and the paticipants involved, it was well worth it. The coolest thing though is that Jon is even a better friend now and he and Katriina are still very happily married.