Posts Tagged ‘Kansas’

Now that I’ve gotten over the loss of my blog pages and comments (and finished off the rest of the ice cream) I’m ready to update.

Two weeks ago (two weeks already!) my friend Cat and her fiance Kyle were married on a farm outside Kansas City. The weekend felt like a destination wedding for me. I arrived late Wednesday night. Cat took me and our friend Sarah, recently stateside after a year in Senegal, to a large suburban mall. Cat left Sarah and me to wander the mall while she waited to get antibiotics.

Talk about culture shock, for both of us. It was the largest mall I had been to in a year. Sarah hadn’t been in a mall period. Clothes, fast food, SO MANY PEOPLE = sensory overload. We got lost in Dillards — turns out they had a second store just for women’s clothes and shoes across the mall. The food court had 20 different options for lunch and I went for Japanese (don’t have that here!) and Sarah appropriately chose orange chicken.

After the mall, we left the city for the farm to start setting up. Chairs had to be taken from the barn to where the ceremony would take place behind the larger of two houses on the property. The wedding party and family stayed in the houses.

The wedding was the perfect reason for a mini-reunion with great grad school friends who traveled from as far as Africa, San Francisco, D.C. and Wyoming.

(All my pictures are on a disposable camera that probably won’t be developed for a few years, so this was borrowed.)

Cat and Kyle did most of the decorations themselves, so every part felt like it belonged to them. Name cards were personalized bottles of Jones soda. The dance floor was lit with white Christmas lights. Champagne was swapped for lemon-ginger infused Polish vodka.

Because it was 100+ degrees with the humidity, it really felt like we were back in Missouri again. I had a hard time with the heat and humidity. I ran with the groom one morning at 7 a.m. and we were drenched in sweat just walking to the road. While setting up, I had to step inside every half hour or so. I drank water like crazy and still plumped up enough that my bridesmaid dress (that fit perfectly when I packed it) almost didn’t zip up.

It’s hard to believe I lived Midwestern summers all my life and in Louisiana last year. Winter here might be hell at times (or for a long time), but it’s worth it for the dry mountain air and cool summer nights and mornings.