Sunday was a very laidback day. Most guests stayed for the farewell brunch at the hotel, which was delicious (our friend Amy apparently disagreed by the look on her face) and a very relaxing way to recover from hangovers and start the trip home. We also spent the morning wrapping up details. For example you can see Somchai pretending to listen to our wedding planner go through some details, after which he no doubt said he didn't know and she should talk to me.

Shifted gears for dinner, leaving Thailand behind for a traditional New England dinner. The Pitcher Inn is really well known for its food and wine, and we had plenty of both. I think you're supposed to drink lightly on your wedding, but I remember being pretty liquoured up by the end of dinner, and a bit worried that we had another five hours of drinking and dancing still to come.

As the guests got drunk, we took some time off to get married a second time, this time in a Buddhist ceremony. Well, it was sort of a Buddhist ceremony adopted for Vermont and the absence of monks, which meant we mostly did the blessing part. Mom did the honors by putting those very fetching headpieces on us, then all the guests came by to bless our union and pour water over our hands.

We wanted to have some Thai entertainment, which generally consists of traditional dancers, drag queens and gogo boys. We opted for the more traditional route, but spiced it up a bit with transvestite dancers. Unfortunately, the supply of transvestite traditional Thai dancers is woefully thin in Vermont, so we ended up flying in a dance troupe from San Francisco to entertain the guests.

For some reason the easily accessible photos were heavily skewed toward this part of the event, so I've added an extra post to accomodate the photographic excess. This part of the day was Thai themed, with Thai snacks and Singha Beer accompanying (and probably conflicting with) the inn's fine wine and champagne. But the day was about to get a whole lot more Thai...

I think because the ceremony was a bit more emotional than most people expected, the party started off quietly, with lots of hugging. I think it was especially moving for the gay couples there, as this was still a very novel event, Vermont being the first state in the US that allowed gay marriages (well, technically civil unions, but I like to remember it as a wedding and ignore the legalese). But the liquor from Ari's wine cellar flowed liberally and everybody got very jolly very quickly.

And, finally, the main event. I don't remember much except that I cried throughout most of the ceremony, and wedding crying being contagious, most of the guests did too. Our minister was a former Catholic priest, who went to Central America to minister to various rebel groups, then fell in love with a nun, left the church and is now a Unitarian minister. With that kind of background, the religious part of the ceremony was mercifully short. We finished with a popular Bangkok song by Lighthouse Family, and then the drinking began.

An hour before the ceremony, the little inn was abuzz with activity. The florists were running around like maniacs up until about twelve seconds before the ceremony began. Meanwhile, Somchai was in deep concentration trying to memorize his vows and I was going over the service with the octagenarian minister. As you can see from the photo with Somchai and the singer for the ceremony, the weather was looking ominous just before we were supposed to start, but just like yesterday, everything cleared up just in time.

The dinner was held on the SS Ticonderoga, but was catered by the very friendly folks at the Round Barn. We almost had a catastrophe on our hands, as the weather turned foul, with predicted thunderstorms, gusty winds and hail. The Round Barn owners came over to talk to us as we were about to leave for the dinner to tell us they thought we should cancel due to the weather, which was making the whole event potentially unsafe. We decided to persevere, on the understanding that we may have to drive right back to Warren if the weather continued to deteriorate. It looked pretty grim during the trip, but just as we arrived the clouds parted and we got a great, sunny day. Had a great party, with some speeches, including a surprisingly entertaining one from pomme, who to my surprise had grown from my baby sister to a mature adult (with boobs even!) while I was traveling the world. After lots of drinking, we all headed back to the hotel for continued merriment at the Pitcher Inn bar.

While the public areas and exterior of the inn are typical New England, the thirteen rooms are quite idiosyncratic. Each was designed by a local artist or design team, and very thematic. We stayed at the ski room, which, obviously, uses skiing as the theme. The overall effect is of a ski lodge, with all sorts of skiing kitsch spread around the room. Other rooms are completely different, and are either fun and frivolous, or too over the top, depending on your personal tastes.

Pitcher Inn, Overall: 8, (Room: 8, Facilities: 6, Service: 10)

The Pitcher Inn is a very typical New England inn on the outside, with the added attraction of an excellent chef and one of the best wine cellars anywhere, earning it a very rare affiliation with Relais and Chateaux. Ari ran the wine cellar at the time (I saw from their website that he's now the general manager) and he's extremely knowledgeable and a really great guy as well. The chef is a very nice woman who's also extremely shy, so she rarely leaves the kitchen, but she's really amazing. We were aiming for an intimate weekend of topnotch food and drink, so these elements were very important, and they really delivered. As an aside, when I'm planning a trip I often consult places like tripadvisor.com, which gives everyone the opportunity to comment on a place. I find it fun more than informative, since invariably, one person will write, greatest hotel on the planet, followed by the next commentator saying never again, disaster, etc. But one piece of advice if you're reading other people's comments, if the person starts by saying "I had my wedding at the hotel" then disregard the rest of the comment. Invariably the person says it's the best place on earth, service is the best etc. But of course when you're paying enormous sums of money, renting out the whole hotel and all that you're going to get great service, plus it's where you had your wedding so you're emotionally attached to the place. Having said all this, in this particular case, disregard the advisory, and believe me, this really is a fantastic little inn.

Warren is a very small, very quaint town in the Mad River Valley in central Vermont. It's very popular in winter for skiing and fall for looking at the leaves changing color, much more laid back in the summer. Warren has a town hall, two churches, one covered bridge, one general store, and the Pitcher Inn, plus a few houses of course. And that's all you need to make a typical New England village.

91. Warren, Vermont

It was strange driving into Warren, home of our three day wedding. I had been working on it with a local wedding planner for many months, but only via internet, so I really had no idea what to expect. But Somchai was even more clueless, since he's never been to small town New England. As we were driving up the narrow mountain roads, past farm after farm, I could see Somchai getting very tense in the passenger seat. I don't think he had expected the place to be quite this rural, and worried that the hotel and wedding places wouldn't be up to scratch, and that our guests, flying in from all over the world, would be bored out of their minds in countryside like this. But as we pulled into the little town of Warren and arrived at our hotel, the Pitcher Inn, he seemed much more at ease.