Jak & Juls Wedding Page

Wow, long time since the last update.

Well, we did get married. And it was a lot of fun. And it was great to see so many friends. And, especially since September 11, it seems like a long time ago.

But we love being married and talk about how great our life has been all the time. Can it stay this way? we ask each other. We hope so.

Julie wrote to a friend about the wedding. Here's her description:

jack and i had two goals for our wedding; one, that it be spriritual, and two, that our friends and family had fun. i had frequently been told that you have to try to relax and try to enjoy your wedding day. it was no problem- having most of our friends and family around in body (and all in spirit) was so supportive and fun and we and our guests felt lucky we had such wonderful people in our lives. asking people later what they liked best about the wedding , it was :"the people". it was at an old dairy farm converted into a mountain lodge in vermont- we rented out the whole lodge and the staff was great and made us feel we had the whole place to ourselves.

we got married in the field right next to the appalachian trail and a thru-hiker ended up in our wedding video. my 92 year old grandfather walked me down the aisle which meant a lot to me. gramps was just happy we didn't fall. we had a great local minister who we had gotten to know, she did a great job linking the biblical reading my sister did with this theoretical ancient chinese reading on 'harmony, not conformity' that jack's aunt did.

after we did the champagne toast the sheep were let out of the fence and went racing around the yard between the guests making for many funny and surprised photos. the dancing was the best. i had said i would play dancing queen 3 times because i could, after all it was MY wedding! annoyingly the cake cutting cut into the dance time- jack said i smushed the cake into his mouth, grabbed his hand and raced back to the dance floor. i changed into a chinese wedding gown and then a few more comfortable dresses after that. at midnight we went down to the lake to the bonfire with s'mores and ending up roasting marshmallows and singing to guitar tunes until 2 am.

Wedding: August 18, 2001

July 25, 2001

It's officially a big wedding--we hit 100 positive RSVPs today! Cool.

As a reminder, everyone, even sisters, are expected to RSVP, as Pauline did. Even if you have to do it by e-mail. From Chile. Or Pittsburgh.

We're firing the dj.
Well, probably not, but we've been getting a lot of requests for Madonna songs--and no two are the same. So I'm thinking we'll put on the Immaculate Collection and send the guy home early. What do you think?
(Oh, and we'll throw in that Ace of Base song for Krak. All that Krak wants is another baby.)

I'm looking forward to meeting a lot of you (and better yet, seeing some of you again). George Skokan and I have struck up an e-correspondence based on the lameness of Pottery Barn gift registries and Scientific American magazine. I feel like I already know him.

Tom Hong sent in a delightful reply card with his response in pictures.

And we got this fortune cookie message from Kelly and Gavin (who are getting married in September): You will be spending time outdoors, in the mountains, near water.
Sounds like the wedding. Also sounds a bit like our honeymoon to... Niagara Falls! (then we're heading to Toronto, Montreal, back to Boston for a week and then to the Greek Islands for two weeks! We're planning on visiting Santorini and Crete, and possibly others in that area. Any favorite beaches, restaurants or pensions you want to recommend? Please do!)

July 18, 2001

Sometimes I feel like I'm talking to myself. E-mail me if you read this page semi-regularly. It would make me feel less like a crazy person with a modem. Remember when crazy people would talk to themselves out on the street? Sigh, those were the days.

We're up to 31 people for the wedding! Statistically speaking, two of those people share a birthday. Happy Birthday, you two!

PLEA for Transport
Nicole and her baby Zeke will be in Boston from Hong Kong next month. How lucky is that? But she doesn't have much free time. If anyone is driving up to the wedding on Saturday from Boston and is willing to take two passengers (one and a half by volume), please let me know. Also, if anyone is leaving Vermont and driving to Boston on Saturday night, or early Sunday, and is willing to take these charming passengers, let me know. If we can get her some rides, she will be forced to come. If she is forced to come, she can tell us all about the good Chinese food she's been eating. Yum! Also, Zeke is very cute. (Yes, I know what you're thinking, and we DID only invite cute, good looking people to the wedding. After you see everyone I dare you to suggest otherwise.)

TRANSPORT
Speaking of rides, if anyone from Boston wants to carpool, send me an e-mail. I will, as I did for the New Yorkers, then just compile a list of known Bostonian guests and create an e-mail list for you to chat on and work out your differences. Hey, maybe you even share a birthday!

By the way, we've only received one example of the dread UNSIGNED RSVP card! Judging by her handwriting and the request for the Celine Dion Titanic song, I think it came from Liz Wollman. Sorry, Liz, just as at your wedding, if the guy plays that song, I'm going to have to stop him. However, we'll see if he can accommodate your second request, the theme from Ren and Stimpy.

July 17, 2001

We're getting RSVPs! Very exciting. So far we know that 20 people are coming. It'll be nice and intimate. But I guess we gave y'all four more days to respond, so we'll see.

Songs that have been requested: It's Got to be Real, and Holiday (Madonna). The "younger" folk (we call them "pups") have been better at requesting songs than the "more seasoned" crowd (the "big dogs"). This is not good. We have a much better idea of what the pups want and need more specific songs from the big dogs! E-mail us if you've already sent in the card.

Oh, and there's also bad news--we got a couple of envelopes back without being sealed, and without cards, in other words, SOMEBODY (read: Jack) didn't lick the envelope well enough and the card fell out. So. If you receive an envelope from us, and have no idea what you're supposed to do, but are web-savvy enough to have found this message, please send us an e-mail telling us if you are coming and request a dance tune if you like. (Especially if you're a big dog. See above.)

GOLF
Did that get your attention? Are you a golfer? In that case, send me an e-mail and I'll pass them along to other interested wedding guests so that you can make up foursomes for the weekend. As they say in the personal ads: Friendship...and more!

July 12, 2001

We were just up in Vermont last weekend and it's beautiful up there. I hadn't been in the summer before and this just makes me look forward to the wedding even more. Mountain Meadows is gorgeous, with their flower gardens busting out all over. Plus, we had a chance to go over details with the mistress of Mountain Meadows, Michelle, and our minister, Diane.

So, I've updated a few pages recently, primarily the schedule, registry and directions pages.

The invitations are out! Looking forward to your RSVPs (this sounds bizarre, but we left room for you to write a note).

June 25, 2001

Julie was kidnapped! We were just sitting around the house playing guitar and waiting to go to brunch at Maria's house when half a dozen beautiful women wearing trashy 70s clothing and spectacular wigs burst into our house and took her away.

Next I saw her, I was sitting in a park, eating guacamole and reading a book (my favorite recreational activity) and she was delivered, apparently rescued by Emma Rosen, who just happened to be in town from San Francisco?! [Insert interrobang]

The story is pretty confusing but apparently the banditos also rounded up Raquel Lopez from a McDonald's, drove to New Hampshire and there was a forced march through the rain (I'm confused as to whether the kidnappers or the kidnappee was doing the forcing). Also in the story were Amy Crosson up from Pittsburgh, Karen Lasser, Vicki Jackson, Alix Hong, Elizabeth O'Neill, Julide Aker, Elizabeth Mundy and Maria Daniels. It's very jumbled, but if you see any of these women, it may be worth asking about. I found a camera among the bandito's [bandita's?] belongings and am having the film processed as I type. I'll keep you posted on developments.

Oh, by the way, a bunch of those criminal types joined me in my guacamole, as did Pete and Ada, Kate Courteau and Paul Graham, various bandita spouses (Tom Hong, Phil Knapp, Andrew Cohen), the lovely Gladys, Julie's mom and Joe, Al Allison and his grandson Henry up from Texas (that's a lot of hitchhiking!), and someone who will no doubt send me an angry e-mail for not mentioning them.

Hey, if getting married is as much fun as having your fiancee kidnapped, bring on a crime spree!

Hi, I'm back. And I finished one of these pages, more or less. Yes, the Hootenanny is up and running. I changed my mind a few times (Hey, even Neil doesn't like Heart of Gold so much, and plus Andy Dunn has a funny story about La Kurikahn). For those interested, the Hootenanny will be a campfire sing a long and I've posted a dozen songs that I thought would be a) familiar to people and b) are relatively easy to play, to encourage beginners to bring guitars, harmonicas, violas, cellos or whatever and play along.

Some people have asked about car pooling. I will try to organize something (i.e. send lists of people) for residents of New York City, Boston, and Toronto. If you are coming from one of these places, or somewhere else and would like a ride, or a passenger to share costs, let me know. This will all be happening in June, as I will be out of the country for a while.

Okay, I'm trying to get more organized and set up more stuff. This will still be a great start page, but I'm going to be putting up these pages too:

This page was set up to separately archive whatever junk I write about our impending union. I thought it would be nice to have it all in one spot for anyone who's interested.

Most things on here will have been seen on the main page, but I might put in some extra stuff, like on the sidebars, or the picture of Boo below, if I have time. Even better, it would be great if Julie wrote stuff here. We'll see.

November 28, 2000

We have a date for the wedding. I'm taking Julie, and she's taking me. Ha ha ha.

No really, we have a date:

August 18, 2001.

Mark it in your calendar, scribble it on your Palm Pilot, write it on your hand. We also have a place:

Mountain Meadows Lodge, Killington, Vermont.

This all came about over the past month. Julie and I went up to Vermont to look at potential places to marry. The thinking was, a Boston city wedding would be very expensive and probably in a hotel-not our first choice. And outside Boston, it's still pricey but we were considering places like the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln or the Crane Mansion. Both beautiful, extremely expensive, and somewhere around 45-75 minutes drive.

On the other hand, Killington is about two hours from the nearest well-serviced airports (Manchester, NH and Burlington, VT), and an hour from some smaller, commuter airports (Rutland, VT and Lebanon, NH). Julie's family has a condominium up there for skiing, so there is some sentimental feeling towards Killington. (In fact, Julie's father, who passed away a few years ago, had expected her wedding to be in Vermont.) The summer is beautiful in Vermont, and it's the off-season (i.e. non-skiing) so it should be less crowded. In fact, it's probably too late to book a Boston wedding for 2001 by now.

So anyway, Julie and I went up to Vermont a few weeks ago, and looked around at a few places. Some were cute, some were kind of like corporate hotels, one was next to a store run by nasty Vermont First-ers (they didn't vote for Buchanan by mistake. Although I find these people somewhat disturbing, they are in fact so right wing because Vermont is mostly liberal, what with gay civil unions allowed and a socialist member of Congress in Bernie Sanders). Then we found Mountain Meadows, which was suggested by Mary Crosson's husband Joe.

Mountain Meadows is a converted dairy farm that is now an inn and day care center. It is on the Appalachian Trail (I've made the offer: anyone who walks to the wedding [min. 5 miles] can wear anything they want to the ceremony and reception), and there are other hiking/cross country ski trails that lead from it, there's a lake and canoes, and there's a petting farm with a few sheep, a couple of Shetland ponies, two peacocks, chickens, and a bunny. We walked the trail along a stream to an area of rapids that was very pretty.

What really sold us was a) the extremely nice owner whom we've met only by phone so far and b) the "wedding bonfire". Yes, they will build a fire and set up S'mores for us. Yum.

My parents were still a bit concerned about the distance from a major city (we're an urban people) and didn't really know Vermont. But they were coming down to visit, and to meet Julie's mom, so they drove through Killington and saw Mountain Meadow. And they liked it! So that helped settle it.

Oh yes, so I should maybe write something about the meeting of in-laws to be. It was great. Really. Better than I could hope for. Mary had us over for dinner, and we first congregated in the living room, looking over photographs of family. Then Joe served a great meal (as usual). It was a great evening and then we made plans to meet the next day.

The next day, Julie and I met my parents and we went to visit her grandfather, Frank Crosson. He's a real gentleman, and he made tea for us and we chatted about the Crosson family and recycling leaves. His grandson Pete was there, having come to help rake, but it turns out that Frank, 91, had done it all with a neighbor already. This is a capable dude. Last year he was fixing something on his roof when his aluminum ladder blew down. He had to eventually climb through a window to get in. Let this remind us all to look at the top of houses as we drive around, just in case we see grandfathers stranded on their roofs.

We met up with Mary and Joe at the Fogg Museum and I went into Teaching Assistant mode, pointing out some of my favorite paintings and trying my best to instill an appreciation of modern art into some stubborn students (my father's the worst, but I'll keep trying). That was followed by coffee and dinner in Chinatown. The dinner was good, but I'm sorry that I picked a place that had such bad access to parking. And usually you can justify a walk by saying the fresh air is good for you, but this was Chinatown, and it smells, well, like most Chinatowns, i.e. not fresh air. Anyway, like I said, the food was good, and Mary mastered her use of chopsticks. At one point, she turned to me and said, I just ate something flat and white and I have no idea what it was! (In case you're wondering, yes, the paper wrapper for her chopsticks was still on the table; it was some sort of seafood item-I ate lots of it and I have no idea what it was.)

And then we said our goodbyes. It was really great of my parents to come down to visit, and to have stopped by Vermont to see what it was like. And Joe and Mary were their usual generous selves, spending a weekend with my family. My father just sent me an e-mail that said he thought it was going to be like East meets West but as each meeting progressed, it felt more like we were becoming just one family.

September 21, 2000

I got engaged. To Dr. Julie Crosson.

It's kind of strange. On the one hand, Julie and I have been talking about the future (and the other's place in it) for a while and so things haven't changed. On the other hand, now we're telling everyone else.

How did it happen?

Well on Sunday, we were just lying around, wasting away the morning because Karen and Maxim had rescinded their invitation for breakfast. We were talking, as I said, and Julie mentioned that she had been very happy recently and had thought about asking me to marry her. This was in keeping with a family tradition-her mother asked her father to marry. I told her that I felt the same way. So we stared at each other some. Then I asked her. Then she said nothing. I was getting oddly nervous when she asked me. Yep, I told her. Okay, she said.

We lay there some more and wondered if anything had changed. Was that for real? I thought so, and so did she. But then she started to worry: we didn't have a good story. Offer me the rug, she said. I had bought a Persian carpet in Aleppo this spring and had agonized over the expense, and pointed out to her that the same amount of money could have bought a ring. Don't worry about a ring, she had assured me, give me the rug. And so I offered her the rug as an engagement present. She accepted.

It still wasn't quite real, though, and we knew how to solve that. We called our families. Julie called her sister Amy first. I have news, she announced. I'm sending it telepathically. There was a scream from the other end of the line.

Then my parents. They were very excited and congratulated us, and told us to be prepared to face bad times together and to enjoy the good times together. Sound advice. Then they welcomed Julie into the family.

It wasn't until yesterday that we finally reached Julie's mother on vacation with her husband and stepdaughters in Italy. She sounded very happy. In fact, she had said something to Julie just before they left on vacation that made Julie more sure of this decision: she thought that Julie's father (who passed away a few years ago) would have liked me.

Actually, this whole summer has made me slightly obsessed with marriages and such because we went to four weddings together! We witnessed Sarah and Sam's wedding in Nantucket, Rob and Deanna's reception in Boston (they were married a year ago in Paris), Lisa and Todd's wedding in Napa, and Karen and Maxim's wedding in Providence (thanks, by the way, for blowing off the breakfast). All of the events were tons of fun and we practiced at being professional wedding guests, reuniting with old friends and meeting lots of new friends.

There were also babies to meet. In California, I finally met Anand Chandra, my newest cousin with an exceptionally curious manner. We also got to spend time with Foster who is both shy and talkative depending on how friendly you look at the moment, and her brother Harrison who is going to be a big bruiser. First Cheng in the NFL? Or the NBA? Maybe the NHL? In Providence, we stayed with Ann and Ryder and their new baby Violet and their big girl Dorothy, who is an absolute sweetheart.

All of these happy new and young marriages and families, I think contributed to our decision. All the traveling also made it possible for us to meet each other's friends and families. It was great to tell people about our engagement and hear a lot less of "I can't wait to meet him/her" and a lot more of "You guys seem really happy together".

And just to set the record straight, we ARE really happy together.

March 16, 2000

Big gap in production time here. I was figuring there was no point in updating the web site as the world was ending but here we still are. Whaddaya wanna know?

I met a nice girl in September. September 1998. We hung out a bit and then didn't, and then I met her again in late October 1999. And we've been hanging out a lot more. Her name is Julie Crosson, or "Doctor Julie" for short. It's not actually shorter, I know, but neither is saying the "Gee Double You Bee" and people say that all the time, at least, they do in New York around rush hour. Right. We met in a bar, Julie told someone recently, and we did, the Wonderbar on North Harvard Street in Allston. As it happens, I was with Maria Daniels and she was planning on meeting Julie, so it wasn't a total coincidence.

Then we (Kelly, Gavin and I) got evicted in September, moved to a new place across the river in Brighton, and had a housewarming open house. And Dr. Julie came. That's when I found out she could play guitar. And then she invited me to play football, we saw a movie, you get the idea. It's been terrific and I'm super happy.

Yes, but what KIND of doctor? you ask. Specialized in Internal Medicine, working as a General Practictioner at Dorchester House, treating mainly immigrants and the poor. How cool is that?

But, you say, what kind of person is this Dr. Julie? (By the way, no one actually calls her Dr. Julie to her face, just in case you meet her.) The answer is, the opposite of me! Really. Check this out: she's dog, I'm cat; she's an M.D., I'm getting Ph.D.; she's outdoorsy, I'm urban; she's the oldest sibling, I'm the youngest; she's worked and traveled a lot in the New World, I work and travel in the Old World; she reads the New England Journal of Medicine, I read Entertainment Weekly; she's a Boston native, I'm a transplant; she's blond, I'm not; plus she's responsible, has a job and steady income, and is smart, charming and energetic, I...uh...I have a web site that I update every year.

It's kind of odd, and almost like we've lived our lives on two different planets (only one of us can identify any given song on the radio). Still, it's great to learn about, and learn to do, so many new things. Heck, I even really like her dog, Boo, a slightly hyper border collie/shepherdie mix, and her nephdog (sister's dog), Rufus, a wise looking golden labrador.

Remember Pete and Ada's wedding? This is what I wrote about it. We're hoping to have a wedding that has a similarly relaxed, fun atmosphere.

August 30, 1999

Ada and Pete got married on Saturday.

On Wednesday and Thursday, friends of the bride and groom came in from out of town and I hung out with them a bit. I missed the bar hopping on Wednesday which culminated in the ordering of a $129 case of Bud Light at the Presidential Suite of the Charles Hotel in Cambridge. But I was there for the Thursday mass face feeding at Dali's, followed by a night of poker at our humble (and soon to be vacated) abode.

On Friday, we managed to crawl out of bed to drive to Vermont. We stopped by Curtis' Barbecue on the way up and had some delicious ribs (food is the theme here, in case you hadn't noticed yet) and made it up to Camp Wachussett in about four hours. It rained the whole drive up and was drizzling when we got there. I had Alanis Morisette's "Ironic" stuck in my head the whole way ("It's like ray-ee-yain, on your wedding day..."). The camp was by a lake, with canoes and playing fields and cabins on either side of a lawn. The caterer had already set up a tent on the lawn, and put up a decorative arch for the ceremony.

As the sun went down, more guests began to arrive and the sky cleared up in time for some volleyball. Like clockwork, as soon as we got hungry again, we turned around to see Pete's mom drive in with dozens of pizzas. Meanwhile, his sister in law Jeni had been baking dozens of chocolate chip cookies. They were sort of home-made even though they came out of pre-made dough because Jeni is the food engineer who designed all the equipment that pre-made that dough. I was pretty impressed. I tried to express my admiration by stuffing my face full of cookies at every opportunity. Although I single out Jean and Jeni, everyone pitched in to set things up, put out the food, and clean up. Very commune-like, very Vermont.

The next morning Pete and Ada sat around gabbing with people in their shorts and T-shirts until someone finally got them to get dressed before the ceremony. We assembled on the lawn and Stacy MacDonald and I sang a song as Ada and Pete came down the path together. Here's the song:

"I do" (Pete and Ada's Wedding song) by Jack Cheng

I would still love you if you didn't eat pork
I would still love you if you never used a fork
I would still love you if you didn't snore
but you do you do you do

I love the way you speak
I love to cook just to watch you eat
I stop and listen just to hear you breathe
yes I do I do I do

I would still love you if you didn't have hair
And I'd still love you if you didn't love bears
I would still love you if you didn't master stairs
but you do you do you do

I love the fact that you keep fish
And you can pot and make a dish
I might not love you if you didn't play bridge
but you do you do you do

I know our lives are not set in stone
Change is going to come
But we won't have to face that change alone
Together we'll have much more fun

I would still love you if you couldn't drive my truck
I would still love you if you never pushed your luck
I would still love you if you didn't f...ind this very funny
(You do you do you do) <--this part was a Jedi mind trick

I'm always laughing when we bowl
You keep me warm when I get cold
Even your name makes me feel whole
Yes it do, it do, it do

I know that there's no guarantee
That lasts til the end of time
And I know that I'm not perfect yet
But for you I'll keep on trying

For you, for you, for you... I do

Then Tom Berger, Officiant ordained by the Universal Life Church of Modesto, California, welcomed us to the ceremony and introduced the speakers, Scott McNeely and Simon Koike. Scott and Simon both gave great talks that were full of jokes and emphasized how completely comfortable Ada and Pete are together and how right they seem to be for each other. I've never heard so much laughter at a wedding ceremony before.

The vows were very straightforward and clear and Tom was very authoritative as he declared Ada and Pete husband and wife. The whole ceremony was no more than 15 minutes long.

Many photos were then taken, and Ada and Pete jumped into a canoe and paddled around a bit for some photos (Why not, someone said, she's not going to wear that dress again, anyway).

And then we ate. Figs wrapped in bacon, steak on skewers, barbecued ribs, salmon, vegetable kebabs, salads... and chocolate cake. The cake looked a bit like (sorry, art history reference alert) Breughel's Tower of Babel except the building would have been made of chocolate and all the little people on it would be chocolate and there would be rivers of chocolate flowing down it and there would be chocolate in the shape of leaves decorating it. Okay, it didn't look like the Tower of Babel, but it was a big Ziggurat of Chocolate.

The rest of the day was spent playing softball and volleyball, canoeing, sailing, sitting on lawns and drinking beer, telling stories around a bonfire (I'm glad Ray didn't drown in a toilet and I'm also glad I never had to use the bathroom after Kurt... injured himself). The next morning Sarah Tomasi impressed a lot of people with the ribs and donut on her breakfast plate. The Miracle of the Pizzas continued and we tidied up the camp and closed up shop. And, in the last volleyball game, I charged up towards the net, missed the ball, kept running, hit the net with my face, kept running and ended up with on my back a few feet into the other team's court. So my souvenir from the wedding, as I write this, is an X of rope burn right in the center of my forehead, between my eyebrows. Yes, I do look like a dork. Don't worry, though, the pain helped me forget how much it hurt when I whipped myself in the back of the head with one of Pete and Ada's wedding gifts.

[My dumbest move, however, was when tired, and maybe a little tipsy, I flipped the tape I had been recording on my walkman and recorded more campfire stories over the interviews I had been diligently collecting and--it gets worse--the ceremony. I bet Alex Chadwick never does that. So I lost Scott and Simon's speeches, Ada's parents hemming and hawing when I asked about how they liked their new son-in-law ("Well, Jack, what do you think?" Well, he didn't just marry my daughter. "Well, you're younger, and know him better..."), just about everyone telling me how perfect Pete and Ada were for each other, Sara Ivry making nasty comments about Ada's grandmother--to her mother, Pete's roommate N--- (who shall remain anonymous until I figure out how to spell her name) making a nice toast, and lots of random noise. I do still have Kiki telling me about how all the kids in Wayland used to iron their jeans before going to parties and Jane telling me about Pete's au pair. To everyone who will send me jeers for messing up, don't worry, I've already had a few days of self-loathing over this incident and promise never to do it again. And we're going up again next weekend to recreate the whole thing.]

All in all, it was the most mellow wedding I've ever been to and definitely one of the most fun. It was fun because of the setting, and all of the sports. It was fun because of all the people that I met, and it was fun because of all the people I had a chance to see again. It was fun to see all the Vassilovskis again and it was fun to meet all the Cramers. It was fun to figure out how Pete ended up with five parents. Mostly it was fun because Ada and Pete threw a party and they were really enjoying themselves, and when they do, it's infectious.

I'm glad they got married.