I have a sister in law

The result of all the fast-paced developments concerning my brother and his wedding was that he got married this weekend and me and Cindy had to go down to Greenville, South Carolina, for the wedding.

I had used some Hilton Honors points to reserve a room at the Embassy Suites in Greenville for May, which is when the wedding was planned for. After finding out the wedding was now going to be this weekend, I called Hilton and pleaded for them to move my reservation to this weekend and explained all of the circumstances. They were very happy to change the reservation and all worked out very well. Kudos to Hilton for handling this situation very well. I knew there was a reason why I always prefer their hotels.

So we left on Thursday afternoon around 4.15pm, which meant we sat in DC traffic for hours. Luckily, we got to use a new bridge of the always-under-massive-construction I-95/I-495/I-395 Springfield interchange, and that was cool. Then, once we got south of the Capitol Beltway, we got to use the HOV-3 lanes despite only having two people in the car, since my new hybrid car gets mad benefits from the state of Virgina. Very sweet. So, we drove down I-95, to I-85, stopped at a Subway for dinner, stopped at a BP for coffee and a bathroom break, and eventually pulled into the Embassy Suites parking lot around 1.15am. It was painful but the drive wasn't that bad and we got to sleep in on Friday. Very nice. The night manager was waiting for us, knew I was coming and the details of why, and we got our nice room. All very well handled and off me and Cindy went to bed.

On Friday, we woke up around 11am and went to Cracker Barrel for lunch. Delicious. Then we drove into Clemson to see Jim. We met up with him and Sara, got some Clemson-logoed merchandise for Cindy, and went to his favorite bar for some beers. I had a Highland Mocha Stout that was really good. From there me and Cindy headed back to Greenville and the Manager's Reception with my parents where we enjoyed free beer and wine, as well as popcorn and vegetables. They left to have dinner with Sara's parents (first meeting!) and we ordered a pizza from room service, ate it, and went to bed after watching some crappy TV.

We woke up on Saturday early (7.15am), expecting to go shooting. It was Jim's wedding day and he wanted to go shooting. Plus neither Cin or my dad had ever done this so it would be fun. But it was raining and that became a no-go. So we went back to sleep. Then we got up, went shopping so Cindy could get a new dress for the wedding, got some Cold Stone Creamery ice cream, and headed back to the hotel. We got dressed, I picked up Sara's ring (I was the best man!) and we got dressed, met mom and dad, and headed to the church.

We got to the church and met some of Jim's friends and Sara's family. There were six folks from my family (me, Cin, mom, dad, Anne, and her boy, Ross). There were about sixty folks from Sara's family (most of them live in SC). Here's Sara's family...



And for comparision, here's our family...



After the wedding, in the receiving line, Jim looked very flustered when he was meeting them all. Sara's family seems very nice and very large. The wedding was short and went off without a hitch. It was quite good and my responsibilities as best man were minimal. Sara's dress looked wonderful.

Here's a good wedding picture of the bride and groom...



And here's the wedding party (bride, groom, maid-of-honor, best man)...



After the short ceremony, we headed off to the reception.

The reception was at the Westin Poinsett. Ross told us that when he was in high school, this place was an abandoned building where homeless folks lived and his friends would all bet each other to spend a night there. It's really nice now. The reception was beautiful and looked like it was planned for months. They did have a cash bar, largely because the open bar would have been multiple thousands of dollars. The dinner was steak and was delicious. The cake was from Sara's favorite cake place and was really good. There was no DJ; for dancing they used Jim's iPod. The dancing time was kind of short, but that was OK. The best man (myself) gave a rather short and ill-planned toast, but I think it was OK. The maid-of-honor gave a much better one. Sara's dad explained the legend of the Nurenberg Wedding Cup and Jim and Sara did it and succeeded (it didn't look that hard) - this was the first time I had seen this and it was pretty neat. After some dancing, we all headed back to the hotel and Jim and Sara went up to their free Westin room.

Here's Jim and Sara entering the reception...



Well, they absolutely pulled this off. I was so concerned after a wedding planned in one week. Yet they had a full wedding. They were in a church with alot of people there. They had a full reception with a sit-down dinner, a bar, dancing, toasts, a (small) wedding party, a real wedding cake, presents, and everything else that's normally at a wedding (except a DJ :)). It was really impressive. If Jim and Sara could pull this off in one week, a wedding planning in two months would have been amazing.

So, congrats to James and Sara Six. Sara's the most recent addition to our family since Jim. And she's very welcome.