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.

As we bid farewell to Amber, we moved on to the official opening of the wedding weekend, the rehearsal dinner (sans rehearsal of course). And this brings up a slight logistical problem for me, as we have roughly 47,000 photos and twelve hours of video of the wedding weekend, which I think may slow down the progress of the blog a bit. And since this is really supposed to be a travel blog, we should move through this part of our travels briskly to make room for the many subsequent trips. So I've devised an easy way to decide which of the 47,000 photos get to make it into the blog, using the laziness test. Whichever photos are easiest for me to locate, preferably already digitized so I don't have to scan, I will use.

I realize none of this is very romantic, but as you'll see from my waterworks on the wedding day itself, it was of course the most special time of our lives, and we are eternally grateful to the friends and family who schlepped all the way to the middle of nowhere to share this with us.

We then drove back to the hotel to get dressed for the event at the Ticonderoga, which was kind of stupid logistically as we ended up spending most of the day driving back and forth between the hotel and the Shelburne. But on the plus side we got to take the bus from the inn with our friends. Since it was a longish bus ride, we included a server who supplied champagne and canapes to the guests en route, which is a pretty big logistical challenge. And most importantly, for entertainment we had Amber, a local drag queen who entertained the guests with a combination of Vermont trivia questions and bingo games. An odd combination, but it seemed to work as the guests arrived in a very merry mood. And from the photo you can see that Somchai was already very merry on the bus. Stoli, not so much.

The SS Ticonderoga was an old steamship that used to ply the waters of nearby Lake Champlain. When it retired it was moved to the Shelburne Museum's grounds, where it is stranded incongruously on the lawn. It also serves as an events venue, including the very important Brian and Somchai Rehearsal Dinner.

We then drove up an hour to the Shelburne Museum, where we were having our rehearsal dinner in just a few hours. Again, not much to see in terms of party preparation, but we explored the museum for a while. The Shelburne probably has the best collection of Americana in the country, housed in a sprawling outdoor museum. About sixty historical buildings from around New England were moved to the museum, and then many of the buildings were used to house the collection.