Long Island Wedding

This past weekend, I traveled up to Long Island, NY for my cousin Lauren's (Kushnir side of the family) wedding. It was a beautiful wedding on a beautiful day. Who would have guessed that one would have an outdoor wedding, in November, in New York? But the weather couldn't have cooperated better. It was about 70 degrees and the sun was shining. The short ceremony started around noon. Afterwards, there was a cocktail hour on the patio dock along the waterfront. There was all kinds of food in the buffet including fruit, pasta, turkey, beef, various kinds of seafood (shrimp, calmari, salmon, oysters), on and on and on. If I didn't know any better, this could have been our whole meal, but it wasn't. Afterwards, we indoors to the dining room where we had a 5-course dinner. It started with fresh mozzerella an tomatoes on a bed of arugula, appetizer followed by ceasar salad and a lemon sherbert intermezzo. For the main entree, you could choose from chateau briand with a sherry wine and mushroom sauce, roasted duck a l'orange, flounder stuffed with crabmeat, chicken cordon bleau, or a vegitarian meal. They even had chicken fingers for the kids. Each entree came with roasted potatoes and green beans. I chose the chateau briand and it was delicious. Now with dessert, they had assorted cakes, pies, cookies, a sundae bar, a chocolate fondue fountain, and of course, wedding cake. Inbetween the courses, they had a DJ to emcee all the traditional wedding events and dances. We were kicked out of the hall by 5:30 and many of us went to an after-party at the groom's parent's house. All in all, it was a beautiful wedding and I'm glad that I was able to make it. It was nice to see Uncle Greg, Aunt Mary Ellen and Lauren, for I haven't seen them in probably at least 5 years. So yes, all this was JUST Saturday. We were all in bed by 9:30. But with the time change and the sun setting before 5:00, it felt like midnight.

Stay tuned for details on the rest of my trip...