The Sturm Wedding

The whole thing was ridiculously beautiful – the trees were endless and looked like the top of a cardboard crayola box after it has been sitting in the backseat for too long in august. Our 5:30 am Friday morning flight was fine, and tooling around Burlington was wonderful, and I have now fallen desperately in love with the town. We ate and rented a car and drove on out to Lyndon (the covered bridge capital of the northeast kingdom, btw) and stopped at a blacksmith shop and other various local events on the way, taking many many pictures and gasping for breath many many times. Pumpkins were carved, maple candy eaten, and naps much needed by the time we headed out to dinner at the foot of a lake whose upper 2/3 reside in Canada. The food there was oily and heavy and not overly fantastic, but for twenty people in a rural Vermont dinner setting it was perfect. Mr. Tuck talked our ears off, people arrived from out of the woodwork, and it was raining on our way back from dinner which thusly canceled the planned bonfire.






Saturday was lazy in the morning – I did yoga, we took a long walk, I disappointed myself that I was not yet living in Vermont, and we ate pancakes and bagels and greeted more and more and more visitors who had arrived during the night. I spent much time curled up in front of the wood stove, speeches were hashed over, baby played with, jokes made, and much coffee brewed. We got dressed and got lunch at a diner, the Miss Lyndonville Diner, where I had more utterly satisfying and fantastic diner food. The wedding was inside because it rained, but the whole thing was perfect. Julia was not nervous until about half an hour before the ceremony, but she and Schuyler were laughing and making jokes for the ten minutes before hand. The ceremony itself was perfect for them – completely run by them, with speakers giving short speeches, no vows, no exchanging of rings (they exchanged books instead), no visions for a false future, just simply the two of them proclaiming how much they love each other and their families attesting to its truth.







Tables were cleared, champagne poured, dinner served, the bar opened. There were not really any toasts, as most people who would have toasted had already said their thing in the ceremony (I do have to put in a word about the one real toast by Susan and Jenna – they deserve a nice firm slapping. They relayed a story about how they were friends with Schuyler and they needed a third girl to do girly things with and watch girly movies, so he went out and looked for one. He came back to the saying he had found their third girl, and it was Julia, and “even though they didn’t watch as many girly movies as expected, Julia will always be their third girl” The whole thing was rude and inappropriate. The End) Cake was served, dancing happened, and we all drank too much. The party ended at 11, or 12, or something, which was good because we were all too gone to go on much longer, and some people left for a bar, and some back to the house, and we tried to pilfer as much alcohol as possible thinking everyone would go back to the house for the rest of the party. I made a giant fool of myself, as per usual, by burning bacon and thoroughly annoying the boyfriend, and I woke up feeling all the usual repercussions of such an evening.







So more breakfast was eaten and people left and we got in the car again to make our way to Burlington, stopping at a farmer’s market on the way. The trip back was exhausting, but everything was pretty much as close to perfect as you can imagine. I am thoroughly saddened by being back in DC, but I do feel a huge weight lifted, a great excitement for what I can do now. I feel for the first time that the plans I have for the next year are actually feasible. I am doing exactly what I want to be doing.