Joe and Justina

I’ve just added another small gallery of wedding photos, these ones taken by our friends/witnesses Jacy and Victoria. We got them developed at Ferranti-Dege in Harvard Square, because they offer higher-resolution scanning than most places (3592 x 2048 from APS film) when developing, and they’re nearby. Unfortunately, it looks like the film suffered some x-ray damage during the trip, as the resulting scans and prints came back looking very grainy and low-contrast. I was able to recover a decent amount of quality using Photoshop and Noise Ninja, but I’ve disabled print ordering on this gallery since the results probably wouldn’t be worthwhile. Anyway, enjoy the photos–Jacy and Victoria managed to get some great “behind the scenes” shots and caught some things that our photographer wasn’t around for.

We’ve gone through all of the wedding-related photos that we have on hand and assembled a gallery of our favorites for your viewing pleasure. I’ve also updated the photo system so that you can now browse the photos more easily, get full-resolution versions, and order prints (or refrigerator magnets!) of your favorites, courtesy of smugmug.

I just posted a bunch of pictures from our travels in Florence, Siena, and Venice to the photo section. We’ll add more wedding pictures soon, once we’ve had a chance to pick out our favorites.

We’ve just gotten home from Italy, so we haven’t had a chance to thoroughly go through the pictures, but I’ve posted a few that jumped out at me in the wedding album. I expect to add a bunch more in the next few days, so check back soon!

We did it! In spite of all our worries about paperwork, timing, etc., we are now Joe Hughes and Justina Kochansky, young married couple. The wedding went off without a hitch, unless you count our friend and witness Jacy being dive-bombed by a pigeon (he took one for the cause). The photos are sitting on CDs right next to us, but we probably won’t be able to upload any of them until we get back home to a decent internet connection in a couple days. Ciao!

Leaving for Italy this afternoon. Joe and I are bouncing with excitement.

We’d better get to the airport soon so we can be bored for a few hours.

Passport, tickets, money, papers, dress, rings… oy. Here we go!

One more snafu to report that could have been avoided with a bit more effort.

I’d called to cancel this dress on June 2nd, after they recommended that I do so. But a couple days ago I got an e-mail from the company informing me that it would be shipped within the next day or so. I finally found their number (which had been removed from their website sometime since early June) and called them several times in addition to sending an e-mail explaining the situation. Fortunately, I got an e-mail later that evening which confirmed the cancelation.

The moral of this mistake? When canceling an order placed online, call twice and e-mail as backup should you not actually talk to a person.

On another note… in reading through these posts of mine, I realized I’ve never answered the question that I think many people will be wondering about.

Namely… Why?

Why keep this a secret?

I’ve never been one for ceremony and I hate being the center of attention. That automatically makes me less of a candidate for a “traditional” wedding (at least, the modern version of it). In addition, both Joe and I are rather private people… with a flair for the dramatic. It feels right for us to elope in Italy. If this doesn’t end up working out, we’ll figure out something else, most likely also in private. In the end, the commitment is between the two of us and we wanted something equally special and personal to go along with that.

However, once we get back, we hope to celebrate with our family and friends. The wedding won’t be complete until we can share our joy with everyone.

(I’m hoping, hoping, hoping, that my parents will be content with my actions. I’ve had several conversation with them in which they’ve implied if not outright said that they wouldn’t mind if I eloped, just so long as they can throw a party afterwards. I’m delighted with that prospect. I just hope that the reality of my actions doesn’t make them unhappy.)