Well, that happened. My first wedding experience, and it sort of felt like a birthday party, ya know? Like you’re celebrating something supposedly monumental, but nothing has really changed? Yesterday they were engaged, today they are married. Tomorrow, well, tomorrow they’ll be in Scotland. I guess that is a somewhat monumental change, after all. The moment that really did it for me is one that barely anyone else really noticed, wrapped up as they were in the winding down festivities and getting on their way. It was at the end of the party when Adam and Jess and company walked off towards the car, and I realized that the receding back I was seeing was the last glimpse I would get of Adam in the flesh for, well, who knows how long. But this is not unprecedented — other friends have moved away. It just makes things different. So very different.

After that Amy was anxious to get on the road but for some reason I felt like dawdling. I helped Adam’s dad, Steve, load and unload a few things, but really I just enjoyed meandering around, petting the kittens, realizing that I was pretty close to touching an electric fence, saying hi and by to people, and just enjoying the beauty of Rhinebeck. It is a very, very neat place. Eventually we did get back on the road, and so it was, 3 hours there, 6 hours of excitement, and 3 hours going back the way we came. Oh, by the way, the pizza place in town is really yummy, they even had toasted ravioli!

Anyway, I’ve pared down my 150+ pictures to the eighteen best, I have some more good ones that I can put online if there is demand, but mostly they’re similar scenes, and I wanted to keep the impact high. Here are the photos of the day and here is the same thing in slideshow form.

Goodbye for now, Adam, and good luck.