Trip to Washington, DC :: June 15th, 2010
Wow, so much to BLOG about and so little time. Or rather, so many other things to do!!
This past weekend, I was in our nation’s capital for several days. If I owe you an email or something else… this is why!!
It seemed that everyone I’ve ever met was in DC for the weekend too. Thursday, I drove down via PA and stopped in State College for lunch with Tammy Wolfe and Tamar London from London / Wolfe Photography. These two are awesome and they gave me a giant bag of their coffee! Yum! Later, when I arrived in DC I met up with one of my old High School friends, April, who was there for a conference! Lucky for me, because the apartment that I was supposed to stay at fell through. I would have been homeless if it weren’t for her. Well, I was super tired from the LONG drive and I left my car in a weird garage downtown that seemed odd and was several blocks from the hotel. I barely slept because I didn’t think I would ever find my car again. Well, in the morning I went back to the corner I wrote down and looked all over for this garage. I walked all around many blocks in the blazing heat looking and looking. I met several nice garage attendants that were helping me find the right one. I passed just about every major tourist attraction in the process as well! If I wasn’t so hot and stressed, it would have been fun. FINALLY, I found the cheese shop that I remember was directly across from the door I exited through the night before! Yay! Well, I didn’t see any garage, but I saw a fancy lobby that looked vaguely familiar… I walked through the doors and found some elevators. Those looked familiar too. So I go in and suddenly the B4 that I had written down along with the car info made sense! So, I was in the right place. Found my car. Still a weird garage! They should HAVE to hand out tickets when you enter…
Anyway, I get the car, exit the garage, and figure out where I am…. under the famous Ford Theater!! That would have been a helpful landmark to have noticed when I parked my car at midnight! Wow, and I wasn’t even drinking.
OK, so at this point, I’m tired, sweaty and homeless again. I decided to go find the hotel that the wedding will be held in and see if they have open/inexpensive rooms. The parking garage for the hotel is like a speak-easy, and impossible to find, so I park at a metered spot for an hour. The hotel is nice and has a room that I can stay in for both nights, so I check in. I also walk around a bit to scope out possible locations for the Bridal Party images the next day. The area around the L’enfant Plaza is UGLY. Wow, Jerry and Mimi were right! However, a few blocks down the street is the Smithsonian! Gorgeous. Would be a HOT walk though and I’m thinking it is out of the question.
So, I get back to the hotel, check in, dump all my stuff, change again and call the Motorcycle Man, who is in town visiting his girlfriend! Thanks to Facebook, we had planned to hang out for lunch. So, I find my car, see that I have a parking ticket (I was 2 minutes late!), find the garage, get on the metro and head towards the Pentagon. Yet another DC landmark that I did not get to see this weekend. Lunch was good and it was great to see Curt and Allison. I head back just in time to relax for a few minutes before the Rehearsal begins.
You know, as soon as all of my friends showed up for the Rehearsal at the hotel… everything starts to click and the stress just leaves me. Amazing what being around the people you love will do. Jerry & Mimi’s Rehearsal went fine and I helped them sort out logistics of the ceremony before the hotel’s coordinator showed up. After that, we all went over to Jerry & Mimi’s for a backyard cookout. I was already exhausted, so I mostly relaxed and chatted with everyone.
The rest of this story is to be continued….. A separate post for the wedding and a separate post for the Portrait Session I did for Deena & Brad on Saturday morning!! Both were super fun!
