One of the reasons I've been scarce on the forums lately is that I got married in January! It was a crazy and wonderful ride, and I wanted to share a few details and photos. For anyone really interested, there's a lot of photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ben.schrag/
The ceremony was January 24, 2009 in Sao Paulo, Brazil (my wife is a naturalized Brazilian) -- the middle of the summer! The wedding site was a private "club" in the city.
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Front view.
View looking from the altar, down the aisle.
View from the "groom's suite", above, after dusk.
We had friends attending from a lot of far-away places (China, France, USA, Italy, etc.). The days before, while hectic with plans, were also a kind-of week-long party for all the out-of-town guests.
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Here's me with some of the out-of-town guys before the ceremony. I'm in the center; my brother is to the left of me and my best friend and best man is on the right. My friend Kio, a South Korean, is on the far right. By random chance, he's also a BW fan.

We had a fun mix of a traditional Western wedding with Brazilian and Chinese touches.
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The "double-happiness" wedding cake.
The guest favors were personalized chopsticks -- corny, eh? (the take-out boxes have traditional Brazilian wedding sweets in them).
Nerdy touch: all the tables were named after famous physicists (we met in a physics grad program).
We did the traditional thing where we didn't see each other the day of the wedding. But we certainly called each other every 5 minutes to make sure things were still running smoothly. Some pics of her taken before the ceremony.
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At the salon getting all gussied up!
Close-up of the "hardware". The engagement ring is a blue diamond.
With her dad on the way to the site. (We rented some kind of faux-old style car for this. Like a Rolls-Royce, but not really...)
The ceremony! I entered to the theme music from the movie "The Last Starfighter". I highly recommend it (the music, not the movie so much...).
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Her entrance.
At the "altar".
We read poems before the vows.
At the end of the (Western) ceremony, a kind of communal vow was taken by everyone in attendance.
We did a tea ceremony, as well! Some of us had to be brought up to speed on this part.

First married kiss!
One of the 5000 posed photos that the photographers made us take after the ceremony.
In the ride.
After a while, it got so tedious that we even started laughing during the "solemn" photos.
After all the photos, we went and rested for a little while. (We planned this so we could eat, but there's no way to have an appetite in that kind of situation. So, we just talked and waited.) Then, we went to the reception hall:
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Re-entry in the hall. This was one of my favorite moments.
I made a retrospective with pictures from our childhoods and from when we met each other, in the form of a fake "movie trailer". That was a lot of work, but super fun to watch with everyone in attendance.
The best man and maid of honor during the toasts. My best man got pretty emotional (he's never going to hear the end of it...heh heh....).
For some reason, we decided to not do a "first dance", but instead replaced it with a "first song"... for which we sang a karaoke duet of "All I Ask of You" from Phantom of the Opera. So in addition to all of the other planning we had to do, we also had to rehearse in the days leading up to it. This part, I have a feeling, I will never hear the end of.

During the reception, she changed into a more traditional Chinese "qi pao" dress. Very pretty. I hadn't seen either dress before the day.
Spontaneous shot of everyone on the dance floor! One of the things i noticed about being at your own wedding is that anyone you see, immediately asks for a photo. And, also, anyone you see wants to give you a drink. I think I literally received 20 different drinks from people, many of them people who were just working there! I don't think I finished any of them (thank God, cause I am a lightweight...)
Finally, I commissioned a portrait for the occasion, from TL's own Glider!
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The time-lapse video was shown during the cocktail hour and everyone loved it!
Overall, the whole thing was a blur. Exhilarating and incredibly tiring at the same time.
Hope you enjoyed the photos!
