"Love hard when there is love to be had" - Bob Marley

That's the dance floor in the middle, under the string of lights

Friend of the blog Big Cheese got married over the weekend and it was awesome. I mean 'awesome' in the awe-inspiring, epic sense, and also in the 'wow that was totally rad 2 the max' sense.

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Some backstory about Big Cheese (skip past the dotted line below if you're over it):

I first heard about him from a mutual friend over 20 years ago. My friend Jayme said, "I have a friend who is just like you; you will love him." Since I was an insufferable asshole at that point of my life I wasn't really keen on meeting someone else that was just like me. For starters, one insufferable asshole is quite enough, and also, why would I want to meet some guy that was just like me? I am a beautiful and unique snowflake. So we didn't catch up until a bit later.

As it happens, Big Cheese ended up dating one of my very dear friends from high school (her name is Sweet Katie, because she's pretty much the nicest girl ever, and, as such, a good fit for Big Cheese, since he tended to suck all the nice out of the room pretty quickly, especially then; for the record: so did I, but whatever).

Sweet Katie said, you have to meet this person, he's great, he's funny, he's this and that. I was still over it, but since I was pretty much living with Sweet Katie and her family off and on, and taking advantage of their generous love and kindness (Sweet Katie's mom and dad are, not kidding, some of the nicest people in the world), there wasn't much I could do to avoid it. So I really did have to meet him. As it turns out he became one of my closest friends, and except for Jayme (mentioned above), I was the longest-tenured of his peeps at the wedding by a considerable margin.

There have been many ups and downs in each of our lives and although the geographical distance between us has sometimes been significant, the emotional distance was quite small, and we stayed close.
So.

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Wedding Highlights:
- The setting was a majestic Buddhist retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains. The weather was perfect, with warm (but not too hot) days and crisp, cool nights.

- The food was organic, locally grown, and universally excellent, which was a big deal considering the place was way out of town and there weren't a lot of alternatives.

- The guests were very nice and friendly. This is almost always true but it's still fun to meet everybody and hear their stories.

- We opened the wedding day with a morning yoga class at 9 AM, led by yours truly. I prepped a program and playlist but didn't expect the class to be very well attended. Bonus was that there were around 20 people there, including all of the wedding party except one person who was too hung over. It was crowded but I had a blast.

- Big Cheese broke down during his vows and had to compose himself. It turned all the bridesmaids into waterworks. It was nice to see people get emotional at what, at its core, is simple civil ceremony.

- The array of custom-crafted organic pies for dessert. I had the key lime (2x), chocolate mousse, pecan (2x) and apple.Yes I really did eat 6 pieces of pie. They were very small. And I may have eaten a piece of the pecan pie with my breakfast the following day. The fat kid loves dessert. Don't judge.

- Epic dance off to close the night. At the close anyone left standing was on the dance floor, including the DJ and the bartender. It was that kind of fun.

The happy couple are off on a honeymoon now.