Adrift at Sea —Dan’s blog on dankim.com

This weekend, I headed down to Newport News, Virginia. Getting to Newport News was a challenge, but not all that bad, except the nine-and-a-half hour day spent in Logan International Airport.

Flying down to Virginia, while tropical storm Ernesto is sitting over the state is not really my idea of fun, but I had made a promise a little over five years ago, that if Woo ever got married, I would be there. Gee and Woo were best friends since their days in college, and Woo was Gee’s maid of honor at our wedding. Gee knew that she wouldn’t be able to see Woo get married, so she had me promise to attend.

Saturday morning, I woke to a mostly overcast sky. I wasn’t too worried about the weather though—having a personal weather goddess helps, and two of her favorite people were in attendance. I didn’t think that Gee would let a little thing like a tropical storm ruin Woo’s wedding.

I called Woo around ten in the morning, to find out about getting over to the church. She was a bit frazzled—the salon she and the bridesmaids were supposed to get their hair styled at was closed because of a power outage. It seems that most of the salons weren’t able to handle five women in time for the wedding. Later, I found out that the original salon had rented a generator, and was able to honor their appointments.

I went down to the hotel bar around three-thirty. I met with Steve, Jen, his wife, their little boy, Holden. We still had a few minutes until we needed to leave, so we met up with Hunter, Doh and Luis. I caught a ride over to Port Warwick with Steve, one of Hunter’s groomsmen. Luis, a friend of the Woo and Hunter’s, and Doh, one of Woo’s cousins, were the two other groomsmen. David, Hunter’s brother was the bestman.

As the day progressed, the clouds cleared, and by the time we were headed to Port Warwick for photos, we had blue skies and temperatures in the low 70s. When Woo and I talked about the weather that afternoon, we both decided that Friday’s rain was because Gee couldn’t attend the wedding—and Gee wanted us to know she wanted to be there, and that, today, she was celebrating Woo’s marriage with blue skies.

Port Warwick has a beautiful gazebo, which was to be the backdrop for the photos that Woo wanted taken there. However, Woo was getting worried, when we showed up. She was waiting for the photographer and the rest of the wedding party to show up. A few minutes later, the photographer showed up, as well as the bridesmaids and groomsmen. Hunter’s parents also showed up, but Woo’s parents were busy over at the church, trying to get the final preparations for the ceremony done. The storm had affected the preparations at the church.

From Port Warwick, after the short photo session, we headed over to Woo’s church for the wedding. The church’s sanctuary is lit with a massive bank of fluorescent light fixtures in the ceiling, and is about as well lit as an operating room. This actually ended up being good for me and the wedding photographer, as it made flash less necessary. I thought it was a bit strange that they’d keep the lighting levels so high for the ceremony, but in the end it was for the better.

Rob, Woo’s brother-in-law, was videotaping the ceremony. The wedding photographer and I were both concentrating on photographing the ceremony. Looking back, I really wish I had brought my flash and a longer lens, but I was trying to travel relatively light, given the airline baggage restrictions.

The ceremony was beautiful, and Woo had chosen the same reading from Corinthians that Gee and I had used in our wedding, six years previous. One of the music pieces was the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which is my favorite piece of classical music. For me, it was pretty difficult being there—knowing that Gee should have been there—but wasn’t.

However, I was really happy that Woo and Hunter had finally gotten married. The two of them had been dating for almost a year-and-a-half when I first met them, and they’d been together for almost eight years.

The reception was held in the church’s function room. The dinner was mostly Korean food: Galbi, Jab Chae, Bin Dae Ttok, Kimchi, and a few others. The desserts were a variety of sweet rice cakes.

However, the piece-de-resistance was the wedding cake. Sang, one of Woo’s sisters, had made the wedding cake. The cake was five layers high, and each layer was a different flavor.  The second layer was a vanilla cake, the third layer was carrot cake, and the fourth layer was chocolate cake. I don’t know what the first layer was, since Sang took the top layer and the big “B” emblem to hideaway for Woo and Hunter’s first anniversary, and the fifth layer was still untouched when I left the reception.

Steve, Jen, Holden and I headed back to the hotel. I went back to my hotel room, and started packing. I had an early morning flight to catch. According to the TSA, I needed to be at the airport by six a.m. I was going to need a very early start the next day.