Best Long Island Style Wedding Bash

Saturday night we celebrated Claire and Evan's New Year's Eve Wedding with a Long Island Style Wedding Bash in Woodbury (that's a town out on on Long Island).  Halfway there I realized I had left my camera at home.  Great, Brigham, just great.  Most photographable event in ages and you show up with nothing but your iphone?  Oh well, let us proceed and I will do my best to illustrate and recount.

Good establishing shot for a wedding celebration: Photo of your place card.

Tablemates!

Additional tablemates

Additional tablemates, cont'd

After hors d'oeuvres, drinks and another buffet, the dinner buffet is open (along with mashed potato bar, not pictured).

While traditionally one to load his plate to the point of embarrassing his neighbors, Saturday night I think I was a little intimidated by the options and ate much more respectably than usual.  Or maybe I'm just growing up?

And then Claire and Evan started the first dance of the night.  To what I think I remember being a country song?

But soon the DJ started laying down the Top 40 party jams and also Hava Nagila.  The revelers did that thing, you know, from the movies?  Where they lift the bride (and then the groom) up on a chair and bounce them up and down.  And you know what?  I think that's a great way to celebrate and show you're excited about something, that you literally take the person into the air and try to throw them into the ceiling. No, I'm being real.  It's a great gesture of happiness.

Later, after many more jams (and I won't lie, my toes were tapping throughout) the cutting of some cake.

And you know what else was cut?  A giant block of ice.  Into this sculpture.  (photo snatched from Alpha's Instagram feed.  Can you see me? There I am, putting cheese on my plate!)

In conclusion: Great party, great gathering of people from up and down both coasts of the country (and perhaps parts in between?).  A big thank you to the Pritchetts, the Hanlons, and the Pritchett-Hanlons.