Hitched.

Congratulations to Sammy G on his wedding to… erm, what shell we call her? Let’s call her Shammy, after the awards given out this weekend 🙂

Congratulations to Sammy G on his wedding to… erm, what shell we call her? Let’s call her Shammy, after the awards given out this weekend 🙂

Christy and I left our kids at home under the care of Marsha, Christy’s mom. And we set off for Minneapolis on Friday afternoon. Long about 1:00 AM, we finally rolled into our hotel room and crashed.

I’ll leave it to Christy to tell the sordid tale of trying to find a clean hotel room. I’m about to hit the sack, so I’ll have to either update this blog or add more later. Regardless, Mazeltov! We had a fabulous time, and hope you have a fabulous lifetime together.

— Matt B.

10 thoughts on “Hitched.”

  1. What a beautiful couple!!

    It’s so fun to see a young couple in love! I feel privileged to have been invited to such an event. After not having seen Sammy G for more than a decade, Matt was oh so excited to catch up on years passed and meet the beautiful “Shammy” (now officially MRS. Sammy G!!!)

    We actually left Utah Thursday night and arrived at our hotel room at about 2am. The room we were assigned was a mess. The gentleman checking us in was so apologetic and checked to see which other rooms were empty. The next room was also a mess. The third room appeared clean. We soon figured out that the bathroom floor had sticky stuff on it. Despite our frustration we crashed and slept in with no little ones to climb on us first thing in the morning!!

    The advantage of our hole in the wall of a hotel was that it was directly across the highway from the Mall of America. WOW. Okay, if you like to shop, you could shop for days in that place. This was quite the adventure. We dodged pushy salesmen from Israel, got a massage at the “AquaMassage”, ate wonderful foods and found lots of treasures to bring home. I had a stomacheache so we delayed the rides for the next day.

    That night was the wedding dinner. Matt and I were a little nervous since Sammy G and his sister were the only ones we knew there. We figured they’d be pretty busy visiting with guests all night and we’d sit in a corner and watch people all night. Very soon we were approached by the one and only Weed and “Mrs. Weed.” Though we had never met them in person before, they’re family on barnson.org, so it was awesome to have someone we knew virtually and could visit with comfortably. Sammy G had strategically placed them at the same table as us and we had a great time together.

    After hanging out at the fancy hotel with the friends of the groom, we decided to head back to our hotel, make the best of it since we would only be sleeping there, and got back at the magical time of 2am.

    Sleeping in is so wonderful! Once we were awake, we headed for breakfast to discover that despite dozens of major hotels by the airport, there are no restaurants. HOLY COW. In Salt Lake City, where there’s hotels, there are lots of food joints. Our guess is that Mall of America is close enough that all the food establishments felt they would get better business there. So there we headed, back to the Mall of America. Once our bellies were full, we hit the rides. Oh, my. We road the roller coaster with the swivelling cars first on a full stomache. (Not too wise, by the way.) As fun as it was, my stomache ached for hours afterwards. I decided to intermix my rides with my shopping to let my body adjust, so I sent Matt on his way to the next ride…the big axe.

    After the rides and shopping, we got ready for the actual wedding. Amazingly enough, we arrived quite early. Maybe that’s because I was so worried about being late!

    The wedding was beautiful. It was a Jewish wedding with deep tradition among the family and the Jewish culture. We videod much of it. I’m so glad they paid to have a videographer since all we got was the back of their heads!

    Next was the reception. We parked in the parking garage and walked around to the front of the hotel to see Sammy G and his new Mrs. just pulling up in a gorgeous white 1958(?) Rols Royce. Wow. Talk about classy. We snapped a couple pictures that turned out great. Now the best part about the Jewish tradition is that at this point, the bride and groom are excused to spend some time together before rejoining everyone at the reception.

    Once the reception started the traditions continued with the oldest celebration song played by the band while the family circles and dances around the new bride and groom. The music keeps getting faster and faster and goes on forever. Then they lift the bride and groom in armchairs into the air and bounce them around. We got a couple great pictures of this as well!

    After the speeches, the dancing and dinner continued. The food was delicious. Many newly weds don’t get the chance to eat. I sure hope Sammy G and the Mrs. got to. It was fantastic. And dessert was to die for. The icing on the wedding cake was the best I’ve ever had!

    Once the dancing ended we headed back to our little hole in the wall to have our own celebration and packing party and didn’t get to bed ’til the magical 2am. Unfortunately, we had to get up early this morning so that we didn’t miss our flight. We had to get our rental back by 10am.

    The rental car was a hoot. I asked for the cheapest car they could rent to me and they gave us a 2006 Chevy HHR. This car is a cross between a Honda Element and a Cooper. It’s got that boxy look to it. It was metallic purple and looked like a gangster car. It’s so hard to adjust to a new car that’s not yours because you can’t find where everything is. It took us a whole day to figure out how to roll down the windows. Then the funniest thing was when we went to fill it up with gas to return it, we couldn’t find the gas lever to open the gas tank anywhere. We hunted and hunted and eventually figured out that you don’t need a lever to open the gas tank. Novel concept, huh?

    Over the course of the weekend, we took nearly 300 pictures and several videos. Matt will post some of the best ones later!!!

    To Sammy G and the Mrs., thanks so much for a great time. Mazel Tov and happy honeymooning!–

    Christy

  4. Singing?

    There was lots of singing. It was beautiful. Most of the ceremony was sung in Hebrew, then the rabbi would speak it in English. I was very impressed by the whole thing.

    Sammy G must be pretty busy with his new bride considering he hasn’t posted on the blog in quite some time. I heard they were going to be honeymooning for several weeks! It will be fun to see his comments….eventually.–

    Christy

      1. Dude..

        you checked barnson on your honeymoon?

        Well, I wactched half of “Bulletproof” on my wedding night, so I guess, yeah, okay.

        1. Redskins Game

          This place has a “media room” which contains a computer, high-speed internet, and large-screen TV with Comcast cable programming from New York.

          Thus, last night, I escaped from the room and was able to watch the national broadcast of the Redskins/Eagles game. There’s nothing like spending your honeymoon on a remote Caribbean island watching 90K+ at FedEx Field cheering on the home team. That is, until you get back to the room and feel the wrath of the wife.

          Actually, she was cool with it.

  5. My Wedding

    (Finally back from the honeymoond)…

    My wedding was the greatest weekend of my life. All my family and friends traveled to see me get married. It was 72 hours of celebration and catching up. The feeling of euphoria started Tuesday, when the first out-of-town guest arrived didn’t end until the following Monday, when the last visiting guest left.

    For a whole year the event planning took up a lot of time, and my feeling was that the many people involved weren’t blowing it all out of proportion. When the weekend came I realized how important it was to make sure that all the 250+ people who came had a wonderful weekend in Minneapolis. It was great spending time with Weed-and-wife (didn’t know if it was acceptable to release name) and Matt-and-Christy in person. Matt and I realized we hadn’t seen each other in over twelve years.

    When people go out of their way on your behalf, it makes you feel special. It adds spiritual intensity to the weekend. Thank you guys for being here to celebrate.

    Christy, you can totally dance.

    Matt, would love to see pictures!

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