The Wedding!

Update Log:
Jun 25, 2003: Ceremony Details Finalized + Invitation/Program Details Added
Mar 24, 2003: Registry Details Added; Ceremony Details Tweaked
Feb 8, 2003: Ceremony Details Added

Our "special" number is 5

  • Steve was born on Feb 25 (5x5);
  • Our favorite show when we first met was Babylon 5
  • Steve was working at The Great 5-sided Building when we met (The Pentagon)
  • We each have a necklace/pendant with a star (5-sided shape) in the middle.
  • "Tanya" has 5 letters; "Steve" has 5 letters; "Monty" has 5 letters (the maine coon cat); "Ashai" has 5 letters (the siamese cat). (Big thanks to Joe Grossberg for pointing out this last fact, which we had before been oblivious to.)
So it is only appropriate that our ceremony was on the 5th day of the 5th month (this occurred entirely by accident, so we are taking it as a sign of good luck.)

The Wedding Invitations

Pretty much everyone we've ever known and liked was invited to go on the cruise over a year before the actual event. This was mostly done via email, with some phone calls and some snail-mail letters mixed in. (Note: By sailing day, 33 people joined Steve and I on our grand voyage, for a total of 35 people ... the largest group on the ship!)

Once the final attendees were solidified, we decided that we wanted to send a "formal" invitations. But we didn't want them to be too formal; we wanted to set a fun tone for the cruise. So, following a suggestion in a *gasp* wedding magazine, we decided to send message-in-a-bottle style invitations. They were a smash hit, and we're thrilled that every single one made it to its destination. (We ordered the bottles from www.sandscripts.com.)

Some reactions of note:

  • "This is so cool!" -- Postal Worker in Alexandria, gleefully tossing the non-wrapped, non-boxed plastic bottles in the mail slot ... directly under the sign that said *All containers must be boxed and wrapped to be delivered by the US Postal Service*
  • "I can't believe the post office delivered this without a box" --- Just about everyone who received one
  • "The post office delivers anything. My roommate Bo picked a rock off the ground and mailed it." -- Todd Kusterer
  • "I can't believe you used real sand" -- Gwynne Wittmann, who dumped the bottle upside down and proceeded to cover her kitchen floor with sand.
  • "I knew you used real sand" -- Biggles, who dumped the bottle upside down and proceeded to cover his kitchen floor with sand.
  • "My entire town now knows that you're getting married and that I'm doing the ceremony" -- Godfather Charles, who lives in a very small town in PA where word travels very fast when an unusual package is received in the Post Office
  • "Well, heck. I thought someone was trying to kill me with all that powder in there. I had already dusted the whole thing for fingerprints before I recognized your return address" -- Denny Kline, former director of the FBI Bomb Squad

The Wedding Cruise Giftbags

Everyone who went along on the cruise got their own official Wedding Cruise Gift Bag of Goodies.

The Wedding Day

 Monday, May 5th 2003 was the Wedding day, which was the Day at Sea. The ceremony took place in the Caribbean Sea, at 3:15pm, which put us approximately at 22-degrees Latitude and 76-degrees Longitude, very close to Cuba on our route from Miami to Hispaniola.

2:00pm
Pre-wedding Photos with Bride, Groom, Immediate Family, and Wedding Party

3:15-3:45pm
Wedding in the Skylight Chapel, on the top deck (Deck 15) of the ship. Godfather Charles performed the ceremony. Both the Program and the Full Ceremony (MS Word Document) are available here for your viewing.

3:45 - 4:00
The Group Photo. (Tanya loooves photos.)

4:00-6:30pm
Private Wedding Reception in the Cloud9 Lounge on Deck 14. The reception included cake (A fabulous white chocolate with rasberry filling. Too bad the top layer fell off the first minute of the reception, ha-ha. Boats rocking and cakes with pillars don't mix), champagne, and lots of backlit photos

6:30-7:15pm
Break. People stopped drinking just long enough to walk down to ...

7:30pm
Captains Reception (part of Formal Night). We missed taking photos with the captain, but after seeing some of the photos we decided that we didn't miss too much.

8:30pm
Dinner - Formal Night

Attire

Since the activities ran into "formal night," we simply followed the attire guide for the cruise ship. The official verbiage was suit/tie for men (black tie optional, but several gentlemen were in fact wearing tuxes) and cocktail/evening dress for women. (Tanya wore a formal wedding dress.)

Registry/Gifts

If you came on the cruise ...
Coming on the cruise was your gift to us. If you want to give us something tangible, please give us copies of your photos.

If you did not come on the cruise ...
We still don't really want/need any gifts, but as so many people have been pressing us on this matter, we have registered for a handful of items: