Second weekend of June, Third weekend in a row out of town, First wedding of the summer out of 5 weddings and 2 receptions (if you count a November wedding also). We went to Philadelphia- me, Josh and Andrea, to meet up with other friends and go to our friend Abbey's wedding. I didn't buy the flight ridiculously late, but it was probably only 6 weeks in advance- and it cost $100 more than I'm paying to fly to New Mexico in August. It was worth it, but it was rough. It helped that my friends Jenny, who I visited in Denver this year, and Jen who I hadn't seen in a few years, were gonna be there. Jen was flying in from Hawaii! But my trip ended up costing $15 an hour. Wow. It was also nice flying with Josh and Andrea, cause I drove to SB with Josh for Memorial Day and then obviously hung out for his bachelor party, so even though I was outta town I was hanging out with my roommate. Nice since he's not gonna be my roommate that much longer...
As soon as we landed we went to the hotel, and had some time to hang out/cool off (it was ten degrees hotter and way humid there) before we went off to wedding festivities. There was a bus that scooted us off to some quaint area named Manayunk I think, named after the priest that founded this church here, where the wedding was.
The streets around there looked like this, as if preserved hundreds of years. Lots of little shops and people walking the streets, which were barely wide enough for our huge bus. He was a champ driving and not hitting cars.
The inside of the church. Pretty nice. Not air conditioned.
Abbey and Jake (her now husband) had velvet chairs on the altar. Good call. Looked awesome.
More streetscape. I think photos like this give the character of the area well. And the area was cool. And it was nice driving around on a bus, hanging out with my friends.
As you can see, the area was a bit outside of Philadelphia, in the hills- this is the church again. Really cool area. I will remember to go back there whenever I'm in the city next.
We pulled up in front of this great looking gazebo, where apparently cocktail hour was...
which was attached to this amazing looking museum, which looked like it was flown in from Vienna. I assume it used to be some fancy museum but now it was a children's museum called "Please Touch".
The wedding party was taking pictures on the steps.
Theeeeeen we got to go IN the gazebo thing. And it had a carousel. Wow.
And upon noticing people standing by the little gate to it, Jenny decided to ask if we could ride it, cause it looked as if the answer was yes...and the answer was yes. We were the only two to ride at first, but it caught on. Good work Jenny.
Then it was back to the delicious cheese, meat, and flavor-tinis that were premade- Appletinis, Mochatinis, and Cosmos. Jenny held my wine while I had a couple Mochatinis :D
After cocktail hour we got to go to the rotunda where the main reception was at. Which was also awesome. And I settled down on the -tinis for awhile. The food didn't come until TEN PM but who cares, all us friends were sitting around a table having fun which, naturally, was fun.
Here's the rotunda ceiling, under the dome-
Here's the bathrooms, which, I couldn't help it, were cool. Gotta take pictures...
More rotunda. Magical, for a wedding. Stars projected on the ceiling.
Jenny Josh and I. Hanging out waiting for food.
At some point someone discovered that there was candy by the bathrooms, by the exit, presumably as exit party fares for the ride home. This guy discovered he could stuff his suit pockets with Twizzlers, which we thought was hilarious. Enjoy em, dude. Also hilarious was that Josh (or Jen?) went and laid down another pile of em next to him, which he didn't even notice. He was too busy chomping.
After lots of hanging out, some eating, plenty of imbibing, and a bit of dancing (which started well before the food came out, for whatever reason) we headed back to the room to horse around a bit. We (I) intended to go back downstairs and hang out with people at the hotel bar, but my roommates couldn't be persuaded.
Jen (yep, opposite sexes sharing a hotel room!!!) took down her bridal-party hair and there was a gob of fake hair beefing it up, which was gross and funny to put on Jenny, who hated it and was hiding under the sheets from it.
We finally tuckered out, and went to bed. And got some obligatory morning-after brunch, said our goodbyes, hopped back in another sweaty-sweaty cab, and made our way out of town. Here's the beautiful skyline.
We also drove past UPenn and another school I forget which, that were right next to downtown across the highway. I didn't ever know that. Interesting. Wish I'd had time to join Jenny checking out historic downtown- I'd been there before, but years ago. But it was one of few trips where I just did the in and out and was done with it, unfortunately.
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