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.

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.

Saturday was the wedding day, and we spent most of it nursing hangovers with our friends. I made a huge mistake in going to a local "spa" and getting my hair cut, which any idiot knows is a terrrible idea on your wedding day. Anyway, it looked terrible, but since my disappearing hair always looks terrrible, I think it only bothered me all day and went unnoticed by everyone else. After we donned our tuxedos, we did a few (actually very many) formal photos, a few of which are here. While I am of course a big fan of gay marriages, I will say that a bride comes in handy for wedding photos, since there's only so much you can do with two guys in tuxes.

We spent the day Friday driving around inspecting the various venues for the wedding festivities. But there wasn't much point in this, since i we didn't like one of the places, it was way too late to make a change. Anyway, it gave us something to keep us busy. The wedding and subsequent party took place at the Pitcher Inn on Saturday, but there's a village noise cutoff after 9 pm! So we had to book a modern art gallery up in the hills overlooking the village to carry on the partying until 2 am. Our first stop then was to stop by the gallery. We were redoing the whole thing into something with a Moroccan tent theme, but when we visited it was still an art gallery, in the very early stages of being transformed.

There were a handful of guests already arrived in Warren when we arrived on Thursday, although the official festivities didn't kick off until Friday. So we rounded everyone up and drove one town over to the restaurant there. When we pulled in there was a biker gang having their monthly get-together in the bar, which was a bit daunting for a bunch of queers and/or Asians. But this being Vermont, everyone was very cool. We went upstairs to a very casual, very American restaurant and had a fun time.

We also had to rent a few more inns in the area to accomodate the guests, since each one was quite small. The other main hotel guests stayed at was the Inn at the Round Barn, pictured here. It's just outside Warren, set in beautiful grounds. They've got an excellent catering group there, who we also used to cater our rehearsal dinner on Friday evening. We put about twenty guests there, and they loved it. We stopped by a couple of times, and every time we found our guests cooking with the owners or the caterers in the kitchen, sharing recipes. I was a bit nervous about a bunch of Thais invading a tiny Vermont town for a gay wedding initially, but everyone was really friendly. By the time our wedding party rolled around Saturday night, we had some of the townspeople at the party, including some of the Round Barn staff.

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.