We travelled to Bethesda, Maryland recently for my nephew's wedding. We originally booked our flights with Spirit Airlines, but they kept changing our outgoing flight time until it no longer worked for us, so we cancelled that and went with Southwest. That turned out to work well, making it easy to meet two of our granddaughters at the BWI airport. Our return flight, which wasn't so time-critical, we kept with Spirit.
We had several hours to wait for the girls' flight, but BWI is a nice airport for waiting, even though they could do better when it comes to convenient charging outlets. After we were all together, we picked up our rental car from Avis—and experienced our first culture shock. They gave us an electric car! That added a lot of unnecessary stress to the weekend, but I'll save my ranting on that point for later.
Our hotel, a Hyatt, was very nice, if you discount the fact that the parking lot had zero working charging stations for electric cars.
Of course one of the best things about attending a wedding is getting together with family and friends—so much happier than the other major occasion for which far-flung relatives gather. One of the highlights for us happened the first day, when we encountered one of the groom's college roommates, who was wearing this shirt:
You don't run into fans of Jelle's Marble Runs every day, and finding each other was a thrill for all of us.
The mother of the groom generously provided loaves of her famous pumpkin bread; when the TSA has made you leave behind your knife, you do what you have to do. (The card was washable.)
It was an evening wedding, so on Saturday we did this and that and tried to rest up for the upcoming long night. Some family members were ambitious enough to pay a visit to the National Mall, but the girls weren't excited about the idea and that was okay with us. We did get together at an historic diner for lunch.
The wedding itself was beautiful. Personally, I prefer church weddings, with Prayer Book liturgy and vows, and hymn singing. But it wasn't my wedding, and an outdoor ceremony in a beautiful park with vows written by the bride and groom and music I'd never heard before still managed to bring tears to my eyes. Before the ceremony was over, a light shower combined with chilly temperatures had several of us shivering, but every marriage will have its difficult places. If you don't let them get you down, you might get a double rainbow on the other side, like this one that blessed the reception.
