Welcome to Heidi and Art's on-line wedding album. I've
(point-of-view=Heidi) set it up so that you can click on the link that
shows the event or pictures you're interested in, and
you will be spirited to that page.
We got married at Crystal Lake camps on April 3, 1999, close to
Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Crystal Lake is a camp in the summer and a
cross-country ski resort in the winter. We met there in the winter of
1997, when I was invited to
go on the Torrances' ski weekend as a friend of a friend (Alexis
Dimitriadis).
This site is dedicated to all our guests, who worked so
happily and hard to make the whole event go
smoothly -- and of course to the intrepid photographers
who took these photos! Our apologies for the lousy image quality;
basically,
the photos had to be scanned at a very low dpi to make
the files a reasonable size, and then it turned out that the scanner
had some gunk on it that created a kind
of purple haze in the top half of every photo. But
these pix ought to be enough to give you all the general idea. Maybe
someday I'll rescan them nicely, make 'em jpgs instead of gifs, and
it'll be beautiful.
Thank you to everybody; we had
a magical time, and it couldn't have happened without you all.
I made this page using the Angelfire
site and free web space, which is a great service I heartily
endorse.
PLEASE send me your comments
(hharley@email.arizona.edu) or
reminiscences of the weekend -- we'd like to have other folks' thoughts
represented on the page as well.
Ceremony
The
Ceremony
Clicking on the links above will bring you to the
described pictures of the ceremony, with associated text.
This first one is of the whole group, assembled on the
slope behind Laughlin Lodge, with us folks getting
married on the beach. Thanks to Dave for thinking to
go out on the dock to take some shots from this perspective!
Preparations
Mom
helping me get dressed
My mom and
dad (Carolyn and Peter)
got us the clothes
we got married in, aloha-style. They did an amazing job:
we called them on Monday, March 29th in Hawaii and said,
well, we've been thinking, and we might like to wear
aloha clothes. Can you look around for us? They arrived
in Philadelphia on Wednesday (leaving HI on Tuesday!)
carrying white-on-white matching muumuu and aloha shirt
for us, with bridal head lei and groomal lei made of special leaves
whose name I can't remember but which
Hawaiian men wear to get married, plus a special bonus
lei of ti leaves for Xander to wear while he married us. Pretty
amazing! 
Art's haircut
Joanna, Art's best woman, is here
shaving off his
shaggy winter coat for a cleancut entrance into the
marital state. We had an old-fashioned wedding book which
detailed the best man's duties in some depth: they included
things like helping him dress, holding his gloves,
being sure he got to the church on time, organizing
the ushers, etc. It was very elaborate; he figured he
had to exploit Jo's status for at least the ceremonial haircut.
On
our way
Normally this would be called the
"procession" but
we didn't really process, just strolled out the
back door, down the stairs, and through our guests to the beach,
followed by our best woman, man of honor and minister.
Vows
Xander wrote
his introduction to
the ceremony with a
little input from us, and we wrote the rest. Here we're
saying our vows. Even though we kept it very short,
I still stumbled over some words -- but I got it all
out in the end. Art did his beautifully.
Joining
water from the lake
In
some ceremonies, the bride and
groom light a candle
simultaneously with their own candles. We liked the idea of a symbolic
joining of that sort, and decided
that we would each collect a cup of water from the lake and pour them
together into a bowl that Xander held.
After saying a short prayer over the bowl, Xander
poured the joined water back into the lake, metaphorically
returning us to the community as a couple.
Kiss
Mumbo jumbo, presto change-o
husband and wife, you are for life!
*pop*
kisses.... yum.
After
the Ceremony
Bubbles
We have several nifty pictures of people blowing bubbles,
but they're not so good at this level of resolution. Ah well.
It was purty, really.
Sparklers
In addition to bubbles, we had sparkles. :)
Parents
of the bride
Here's us with my
folks...
|
Parents
of the groom
And with Art's folks
|
Before
and After
So far this is only after but soon there'll be before pix too.
Married
now |
Married now too |
Arriving
at Crystal Lake: Thursday
Here's some pix of Thursday events and arrivals. The crowd was fairly
small on Thursday, but we had
lots of fun setting up, making dinner, going for
walks, etc. The picture below is of Laughlin Lodge
from across Crystal Lake, which as you can see is mostly
ice-covered. One neat aspect of the weekend was that the ice melted as
the weekend went on, so that by the end of the weekend, on Sunday, it
was open
water all the way. As usual, clicking on
the links to the side get you to the pix described.
Laughlin
Lodge
Here's a pretty picture of
Laughlin Lodge, where most
of the interior pictures that you'll see were taken;
most of the hanging out and eating and having fun
were done here, except for the reception and variety show on Saturday
evening.
Thursday
Dinner
Dinner
preparations
Throughout the weekend, guests
cooked, cleaned, organized,
decorated, photographed, and generally made things happen. Here's
Xander cutting sausage with Toby, with other Thursday
night dinner helpers in background. The key element in
running a do-it-yourself wedding is being sure
to have self-starters for guests. :)
Chinese
sausage
Here's Art's frying up the Chinese
sausage which we
had with cilantro pesto and pasta as part of Thursday
night dinner. That Chinese sausage was good. As with
every meal, however, there were leftovers, which Art
and I mostly ate on our honeymoon. After having Chinese
sausage for lunch and snacks on a couple of days, we
tried putting it in a campfire cook-up of cheese and
eggs and veggies, where it somehow didn't quite go...
we ended up picking it out and putting the few remainders
on the actual campfire, where it went quite well. We
recommend the original dish very strongly, however. :)
The other aspect of this photograph that makes it nice
is that you get a good idea of Art's winter coat of hair and beard,
before Joanna
shaved him.
Thursday night
events
Thursday
presents
Here's Art's mom, Mary, describing
the painting
she made for us as a wedding present. It was done using
all natural materials: dirt and rocks and shells and
bark and so on that Art had collected for her to use for
such work all during his life. The pattern is based on
an aerial photo he took out a plane window on one of our
cross-continental flights last summer (1998). In
the background you can see a few other presents from
Thursday: a hau-tree-wood bowl from my mom and dad, and a
poster (hidden by my head) that Aaron and Diane personalized for us. It
was
from a Bill Plympton animated movie called "I Married
a Strange Person." It was funny. :)
We looked at a few presents on Thursday
night and a few others
on
Friday night, especially the ones that people had handmade for us. The
rest we opened Sunday after most folks
had gone... it was all wonderful. Thanks to everybody! We're a bit slow
with our thank-you notes, but they're definitely
underway.
Friday
Night Dinner
Friday
dinner preparations
Here's Elizabeth (Art's sister) cutting onions.
Friday dinner helpers were
all around, but special mention goes to Elizabeth and also...
(Heidi's
cousin, Calvin and Deb's (3rd) child), for chopping,
roasting, and brownies and general chefliness.
Friday
dinner 1
Here's some of the spread we ate on Friday, buffet-style.
Friday
dinner 2
And here's some more of the Friday spread. Notice
the christmas twinkly lights in the background, put up
on Thursday by an intrepid crew.
Friday
birthdays
And here's the birthday cake (held by Sandi) for the birthday
girls
Jennilee (Heidi's cousin, Robin and Deborah's oldest
child, in purple top and track pants) and Janelle (significant other of
Heidi's cousin
Aaron, Sue and Lem's oldest child, in grey sweatshirt and jeans). I
thought it was
especially nice of those two to be willing to spend
their special day at someone else's event. Happy birthday
to themmmm...
Friday
activities
In addition to the prescribed activities of egg decorating
and button
making, lots of people had fun independently. 
Chess
Here's dad (Peter) playing chess
with Adam. I don't know what the outcome was, but
that's probably as well for somebody. :) Other folks had card games
going at various times.
Reading
Here's Mary reading to her first grandchild, Sophia, Aaron and
Diane's child, who's been brightening our lives since January, 1998.
Using
the trails
Some more vigorous types went
running, hiking or biking; here's
(from left) Sandi, Leslie,Deb, Gypsy and Rachel on the trail. 
Rope
swing
Also popular was the rope swing out side Laughlin. Here's
Jennilee (whose
birthday
it was) trying out a new style of rope swinging.
Friday
presents
Here's us with some of our other
handmade presents: black cherry otter tail canoe paddles from Rob and
dictionary stand and coffee table from Grampy Harley. Wow!
Saturday
Activities
Prior to the Egglympics, folks found all kinds of things
to do.
Saturday
morning
Here's a photo of folks waking up
for a big day
of fun on Saturday morning: Sue, Sandi, Dave, Peter and
Deb. The other aspect of this photo that's of interest
is that it shows the interior of Kiya cabin, which was the place where
the protagonists of this event met on
that first ski trip. 
Egg
decorating
Here's Rachel decorating eggs at
the egg-decorating table in Laughlin. We had a lot of psanki-making
equipment
(the fancy Ukranian eggs) thanks to the efforts of Joanna and Andrea,
who both brought lots, and people made
a lot of beautiful eggs with it (some of which
you can see in this picture of the
cake).We saved them, and Art
blew them with his special egg-pumping technique, (unrelated to his
egg-sucking technique) and
they'll be decorations for us in future.
Playing
outdoors
Here's Bob with his kids Emma and
Aiden, and Sophie's
kid Adam (in red sweatshirt) making airplanes on
the slope behind Laughlin on Saturday.
Lake
fun
There were plenty of trips out on the lake in the various
canoes and the rowboat that was available. Here's
Dad, Martha, Andrea and Colin demonstrating their expertise.
Spectators
Some folks preferred to practice their conversational
skills; here's Andrew and Becky chatting on the porch
of Laughlin...
Spectators
2
And here's Phil and Alan in a similar mode.
The
Egglympics!
Since it was Easter weekend, we thought we should have
some egg-centric fun activities for people to pursue...perhaps
an egg-and-spoon race, we thought, or maybe an Easter
egg hunt. I called Jonah, my brother, and asked if
he would organize the games, and he recruited uncle
Calvin as co-Egglympic chair, and they went to town. As a result, we
had six, count'em, six different egg events,
five of which were completely original to Jonah and Calvin,
and a whole afternoon of eggciting activities. This event
definitely has potential as a world-uniter.
As usual, click on the appropriate link to get
to pictures of the desired event.
I didn't know what picture would sum up the whole
spririt of the Egglympics for the cover page here, but
this one seemed good. All in all, though, there were
remarkably few broken eggs, all things
considered, and little egg wreckage
left over.
Party
preparations
Here's some pictures of getting ready for the party.
Unfortunately we don't have so many of the party itself,
because people were too busy having fun, but we have a
great video record of the whole party, speeches and songs
and all, for which we thank Phil very much.
We do have a couple of photos of the cake and cake-cutting,
which you can get to by clicking here: Cake
Page
Decorations
Here's Kim and Rachel getting some balloons
and ribbons
ready for decorating the main hall on Saturday night --
they were beautiful. Thanks, guys!
Practice
Here's Rob, Deborah, Jennilee and Trevor
practicing the
song they sang that night (written by Rob). Lots of folks
made wonderful contributions to the variety show, in the form of
speeches, readings, skits and songs; it was really
touching and also very entertaining.
Table
Here's one of our easter-colored tables,
showing the favors and
flowers we had.
Bonus armwrestle
Here's the bride and groom testing their strength late
in the evening towards the end of the party. It was a close contest,
although Art eventually carried the day.
Let it be said, however, that I cracked his egg when we
met in the Egg Gladiators.
Getting
Ready
Here's Jonah
and Calvin busily
preparing the score
sheets, competition trees and team assignments, to say
nothing of all the work they'd already done making
egg launchers, getting garbage bags, and so on.
Here's Gypsy, our extremly
competent scorekeeper, far above any
eggcorruption, recording the tallies of various teams.
Aaron here shown with 5 eggs in
the air, is the acknowledged
eggjuggling champeen, although we also have an amusing photo
of him shaking eggguts ruefully off his hands.
Egg
Gather
This photo of the Egg Gather shows Sarah in mid-gather. The goal of the
Egg Gather was for a team to collect
eggs that had been distributed over the landscape (the
same for every team, of course) in as little time as
possible. The catch was that a team could only field one
adult at a time, although their under-10 member (every
team had one) could collect concurrently with any
of the adults. It's worth noting that there were many
more eggs to collect than could be brought home in one armload. Of
course, all collected eggs had to make
it safely home, no breakages.
Egg
Gladiators
The Egg Gladiators is the only non-original event. We
heard about it as originally an Eastern European game, and it
translates just as well on this side of the Atlantic.
The basics are very simple: each contestant takes an
egg, holding it behind its midpoint, and pairs of
contestants strike each other's eggs with their own.
Obviously, the first person's egg to break loses, while
the person with the intact egg goes on to more contests.
Typical Egg Gladiator game
Here's me
and mom facing off in
the Egg Gladiators
event, with me the victor here. Ultimately, though,
I was bested. The ultimate winner was...
Victory!
Aunt Sue, who won with an egg of
such calcified hardness
that it took several whacks against the canoe to ultimately break it
and prove its freshness. She was,
as you can see, very excited. :)
Egg
Stacking
This is an event with great potential as a
Guinness World Record. Each team is given a handful
of wax (beeswax from the psanki-making) and as many
eggs as they want, and they are to stack them in as
high a tower as possible, either end-to-end (one point
per egg) or side to side (2/3 point per egg). Basically,
one makes little rings or cups with the wax, warmed
in a handy armpit or some such, and uses them to prop
up the eggs. The winning stack was 6 eggs high, which
seemed quite amazing.
This picture merely shows a team gathered around
a canoe (a somewhat precarious egg-stacking
surface, I might add), but not the actual stack; hopefully
I'll get a more representative picture up here soon.
Fireman's
Rescue
The idea with this game is basically similar to the old
egg toss. Two teammates hold a garbage bag by its four
corners, and a third has to toss the egg to them across
a set distance, and they try to catch it in the garbage bag. If the
toss is successful, they step
back a couple of yards (distance set by the judges) and try
again. This event is like the high jump; one can enter it at
any distance, thus reducing the risk that some chance event
might result in a missed catch or a broken egg. Three tosses
are permitted at each distance, as long as the egg doesn't break. On
the soft grass behind Laughlin, eggs survived some mighty tosses. The
final winning distance was quite remarkably
far.
Fireman's
rescue 1
Here's Eric
tossing to his
teammates Rachel and Deb --
notice the egg in the air. I'm pretty sure that theirs
was the overall winning team, the EggSlayers (although
they didn't win this event). Other team names included
the Eggceptionelles, Easy Over, and Just Laid, as well
as other equally clever ones that I can't remember at
the moment.
Action
shot
Here's Konrad and Adam exhibiting
much agility
in their rescue efforts.
Egg
Sucking
This event is as you might imagine, a contest to
determine who could suck an egg the fastest, given
standard-size holes in top and bottom. Contestants
were given bowls to spit in if they so chose, so
Salmonella poisoning was a voluntary-risk activity, althoughit proved
to be a winning strategy to swallow, eliminating
precious moments taken to expectorate.
Egg Sucking
This picture illustrates the many differing
egg-sucking
techniques. Those who got gravity on their side clearly
had an edge on the rest of us, both mentally and sucking-wise
.
8
seconds and not a drop left over...
I'm proud to say that among the many assets
that Art's bringing to this marriage, he's a world-beating egg
sucker. Here's
the moment of victory, twice as
fast as his nearest competitor.
Egg
Launch
The crowning acheivement of the Egglympic committee was
the Egg Launchers, intricate machines of PVC piping, wood,
rubber tubing and screws which could easily send an egg
a good 50 feet when handled by an expert. The game involved
each team goalkeeping a designated area, fielding eggs
launched from the competing team's launcher. A landed egg
counted against you. I don't have any shots of the game itself, but the
launchers were fascinating objects to everybody... 
Never look down the barrel of an Egg Launcher
About says it all, really...
Wow!
Here's Adam, Trevor and Calvin
seeing what the launchers
can really do.
The
Cake
Here's a shot of the cake and the cake-cutting. Art and I
designed the cake, Art made it and decorated it with help
from much-apreciated volunteers, and I made the candied violets that
were part of the decoration. It was a carrot
cake with cream-cheese frosting, and Jordan almonds and truffle bunnies
in the decoration. 
Here's the
cake. Notice the psanki
eggs all around
that people made over the weekend. Also note the egg-and-dart
frosting decoration on the edges of the lowest layer,
an architectural detail on many old Victorian houses
(check your mantels and moldings) that Art incorporated into the
design. The egg-and-dart motif is repeated more abstractly
in the carrots-and-bunnies on the second layer. That part's not so
Victorian.
Here we're doing the regular
thing. Notice Adam to Art's right
with his finger in his mouth. :)
Here's Adam, Trevor and Calvin
seeing what the launchers
can really do.
Ceremony
Thursday:
Laughlin, lake, dinner, presents
Friday:
Dinner, birthday
Friday
fun stuff: running, reading, chess, presents 
Saturday:
hanging out 
Saturday:
Egglympics!
Saturday:
Party: Cake, miscellaneous