Saturday Schedule of Events Revisited

We're going to get tired of saying "I can't believe it's only x days until the wedding" right up until the wedding is over, but still, 8 days is blowing my mind. Tomorrow Amy is driving Martin up to Maine, and unless I can contrive a work reason to stay behind, I'll be going too. I'm looking forward to the trip, but I woke up early this morning fully convinced that we won't have enough room in the car for everything. We've got a list a mile long to do between now and then.

One way or the other, we'll get there, and all of you will to. But the point of this post is to tell you a little bit more about Saturday.

On the main website, we have a schedule of events for Saturday. Look at it here.

We've already told you about taking a ferry out to the island, with driving directions and everything.

Click here for directions to the ferry.

The ceremony starts at 5, and the last ferry leaves at 4 from Southwest Harbor. That ferry will probably arrive around 4:30, giving people half an hour to loiter and wander up to the church. We know the majority of people of people will be on that ferry, but we have encouraged people to come early if they can, by telling them about places like the museum, the Islesford Pottery shop, and most importantly, the croquet tournament on the town field!

If you would like to come out early, you can come in full dress or even bring your wedding clothes with you and change on the island. There are a few houses we have access to where you can freshen up.

We're looking forward to the wedding ceremony, and don't want to talk about it too much yet, but thanks in advance especially to our parents, Mayur, Christie, Darin, and the Rivals for helping us out with it!

After the wedding ceremony is over, we'll wander more or less directly back down to the Islesford Dock Restaurant, and the food should start coming pretty quickly.

Click here to watch a short video about our friends and the restaurant proprietors, Dan and Cynthia.

A word about the reception. There will be no formal "sit-down" period at the reception. There will be food stations, and food brought out by servers, more or less continuously, but not a sit down appetizer course, entree course, etc. We thought this would be the best way to let people mingle and relax in the casual spirit of things. Just make sure you eat and don't wait!

After awhile we'll be opening up the microphone for toasts and stuff, and eventually the music will start. We've asked our friend Jason to kind of oversee all this, so he'll keep you informed of things. Jason and Stu (and to the extent they need help, Jimmie) will be DJ'ing, and I can tell you now they've got some excellent material lined up.

Around 10:30 you'll have an opportunity to bid us adieu, as the first ferry back to Southwest Harbor will be leaving around then. After that, the music will just continue until people run out of steam entirely (there will be a late snack to help keep the party going). But all good things must come to an end and there will one more ferry taking everyone else home, leaving anywhere between midnight and one (depending on how it's going).

Thanks to everyone that has been helping us put this all together (there are LOADS of you, it's really humbling), and of course thanks to everyone for dragging themselves up 200, 500, 2,000 miles to get to the thing.

Driving Directions Re-Revisited

Leaving aside the raw amount of time it takes, getting to the wedding is pretty straightforward.

If you're driving from New York, it's almost 500 miles up I-95. Around 200 miles from the Maine border. People have asked how long it takes, and I've said anywhere between 8 and 11 hours. It depends so much on traffic. We've encouraged people to not do it all in one day if they can avoid it.

You can consult the map for a graphical illustration of the route.

...But by now most people have figured out what they are doing one way or another. (There's the issue whether people should take the coastal route or take I-95 all the way, and we lean mostly to taking the interstate, unless you have lots of time. We love the coastal route, but most people don't actually have enough time to enjoy it.)

Those of you flying are coming into Bangor or Portland, mostly. From the latter, you just follow I-95 up to Bangor then turn right, and then follow the same directions we give to people flying into Bangor:

From Route 95N toward or in Bangor, take Route 395E. Follow for a few miles and take US Route 1A E toward Bar Harbor/Ellsworth. Follow 1A for about 26 miles until it becomes Route 3S and follow for about 10 miles. Stay straight onto the island and follow Route 102S/198S for about 5 miles. Continue straight on 102S for another 5 miles. Route 102 becomes Main Street in town, and Seawall Road south of town.

In addition to the website, we've posted several items on travel to the wedding.

Directions to the Upper Town Dock

The trick to getting to this wedding, as most of you know by now, is that it's on a little island that you'll have to take a ferry to. Since most of you are staying in Southwest Harbor, it's important all of you know where the Southwest Harbor ferry is.

Now before I go on, let me assure you that this is all easy, and you won't have any trouble. This is much, much more information than you'll ever need. But here it is anyway.

First, here's a screen grab from the "Maine Map" page from our website. The red markers are all the different places people are staying in Southwest Harbor. The black marker is the Upper Town Dock. You'll see that the vast majority of people are clustered on on near the intersection of Main Street and Clark Point Road. That's natural, because that's the center of the town. So here are the directions from Main Street and Clark Point Road:

From Main Street, go east approximately 0.43 miles on Clark Point Road. The entrance to the dock is on the right.



That's it! You pass one stop sign and a couple of unmarked intersections before you get there. (Here's some more driving directions, also with pictures. Scroll down.) One thing I'll add is that since parking space is limited at the dock, please plan to walk, if at all possible, from your hotel, or from the municipal lot back at Main Street and Clark Point Road. The other thing is that the entrance isn't particularly well-marked. There's one sign. And this is what it looks like!

Now, that should be more than enough to get you to the dock. The chartered ferry leaves at 4 p.m. If you miss that, you're out of luck. But you can also take an earlier Cranberry Cove ferry to Islesford at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. or 3 p.m. if you like. Bring your wedding stuff over and explore the island!



Finally, just to make sure this is "more information than you'll ever need," I'm going to include a video of Amy, Martin, and I trying to find our way from Main Street to the Upper Town Dock. Here's a map of the route we're following, and below that is the video itself!

More guests in the guestbook!

Welcome to August! The last month is finally here, and we're ringing it in with news of new guests coming to the wedding! Kyle and Sarah. Sarah is Laura's sister, which makes Kyle Laura's brother-in-law and Corbett's bandmate. With Kyle, Corbett, Sinderson, and Flood all coming, we almost have the full band in attendance on Islesford. Hmm.

While I was updating the website I added a bit more info to the Schedule of Events if you're really bored. Today Amy and I bought a couple of great prizes to give to the best dressed male and female at the Friday Night barbecue. I was going to take a picture and put it up here, but Amy already wrapped everything up, so it will have to remain a surprise. Go visit Sheplers.com and get your cowpoke stuff quick!

An excuse to post a photograph

The page was starting to look a little white, so here's a post. While looking around for something else, I noticed that the Harbour Cottage Inn redesigned their website. It looks very smart.

One feature they've added is an "online concierge," basically some things to do, places to eat, etc., in and around Southwest Harbor. If you're there an extra day, and need something to do, it's worth checking out.

Friday Night at the Atlantic Brewery

I've made some changes to the website to update the plans for Friday the 17th. (First, for those people participating in the wedding ceremony, we are going to have a walk through out on the island between 2 and 3:30. That should be more than enough time to work out the kinks.)

FRIDAY NIGHT EVENT at The Atlantic Brewing Company's Knox Road Grille

Then, at 5:30 p.m. and at 6 p.m., there will be trollies leaving from Southwest Harbor (in front of the Cafe Drydock and Inn, smack dab in the center of town, Main Street and Clark Point Road) to take wedding guests to The Atlantic Brewing Company's Knox Road Grille, 15 Knox Road, Bar Harbor, Maine. (You can also drive yourself or join up later, of course, but the grill is shutting down around 8 pm).

Please plan to come! Drinks are on the house! Also, they have great barbecue supplied by Mainely Meats, all you can eat for around $17! It will be lots of fun!

At 9 pm the trollies will take everyone back to Southwest Harbor and surely for a series of nightcaps.

THERE IS A DRESS CODE! It won't be rigidly enforced, but we encourage everyone to come in their best cowboy gear to the barbecue. Boots, hats, belt buckles. Whatever you've got. If you've misplaced your chaps and lassoes, you can also come in the colors of the great Sooner Nation: Crimson and Cream! It will be a small patch of Oklahoma in Maine.


(Driving Directions from Southwest Harbor: Extremely simple. Take Route 102, aka Main Street, straight north from Southwest Harbor back towards the direction you originally came in. Go 8.5 miles north until you hit a fork in the road, and bear right on Knox Road. The Atlantic Brewery is immediately on the right. Here's a map.)

Page 3 done, Page 4 started!

Windy and Katie were complaining this weekend that we hadn't added any guests for awhile. Which is true, but we've been kinda waiting for a couple of things. Photos, actually, from Liam and Doreen at work. Well, Martin decided she didn't want to keep her aunts waiting anymore so she posed for Liam & Doreen & Ken's photos for them. Plus, we also had Troy waiting to be posted. Amy's picture with Troy resulted from a random meeting in the subway this past winter. Previously, the only pictures we had of Troy were of him sleeping on our old papa-san chair. Ultimately though it's not the photos that matter but that they're all coming to our wedding, and we couldn't wait any longer to thank them and introduce them to the other guests! Visit Liam on page 3 and then check out the new page 4!

Seventy Days

That counter on our website kinda freaks me out. Every day there's one day less (and usually every time I check it feels like I've lost 5 or 6 days). I should be looking forward to it (and don't get me wrong, I am!), but in the everyday context it's one less day to get things done that need to get done.

We have a few more things to get done this weekend. A couple more friends from work have signed up for the wedding, and as soon as we have photos I'll introduce them to the gang. We haven't gotten many official RSVPs back but we have a pretty good sense by now of who else is coming that's not already up. Hopefully everybody! We shall see.

We met with Mayur last night to discuss the wedding ceremony for a bit. We're really happy to have him do it and he's paid us a huge compliment by the amount of work he's put into it already. Kudos Mayur!

Here's to the weekend!

Keeping up with developments

We've made a couple small changes to the website. New photos for Tim, Andrew, and Shook, plus we've confirmed that Amy's cousin Lisa is bringing Caroline and Lauren, and Elaine is bringing Joseph and Melanie. We're psyched to have a younger generation there with us!

100 days until the wedding!

Quick update on stuff: If all goes well, we'll be mailing off your invitations in the next week to ten days. We just passed the 1,000 mark on our website counter. I don't know what it's counting, to be honest, but it's still kinda neat! I just got initial measurements for an outfit to wear at the wedding. We just booked flights for our honeymoon. Amy thinks several of her family members actually booked hotels a while ago. We're following up on that and will have them in the guestbook just as soon as we track it down! We're excited about going to see The Rivals tomorrow night--it won't be the last you hear from them! Plenty other balls in the air, let's hope we don't get plonked by any of them!

At our other place...

...I wrote a little bit more about when Amy and I started dating, going to see some Andrew Vladeck shows. Check it out.

More Folks

We've added Dean Chadwin and his wife Alleen Barber to the guestbook. They're bringing their twin girls to the wedding and booked their place last week. That takes care of page 2, which means pride of place on page 3 goes to my grandparents Don & Katy. They booked their trip this week, which is just amazing (especially if you consider Grandma has refused to fly for who knows how many years. And they're taking three separate planes to get there! Grandpa has promised to knock her upside the head so she can do it).

UPDATE: Jimmie just called with his flight! He's in! Also, we've updated our Schedule of Events with some more specific information.

What's This All About?

We've added a blog to the wedding website because we wanted a way to compile a lot more information on the area than we could on the regular website: links, excerpts, big things, little things. Instead of them just sitting in our email and bookmarks, we can put them here for other people to see too.

You can bookmark, or even better, syndicate (or RSS) the site, so that you won't miss any developments or new information.

Also, to the extent anyone has questions on where to stay, what to do, or if they need clarification on anything, this is as good a place to do it as any, especially if everyone would benefit from the clarification/question/etc.

We don't expect the blog to be particularly useful to anyone until right before the wedding, when you're packing up to go and want some ideas on what to do when you get there.

But when that time comes, we hope to have lots of resources for you, both here and on the rest of the website.

January 31, 2007

We'd like to acknowledge the young folks who have been working with us to bring this all to you. Thanks so much to our future brother-in-law Chris Sinderson (for the website design) and to Nick Bertozzi for designing our save the date cards and invitations! Also thanks to Kayrock for the save the date screenprinting.