The Wedding

The wedding in Chicago was so much fun!

We left the House on the Cove on Thursday mid-day, after printing our boarding passes at home (first time we have done an online check-in). We chose to take a "coastal" route that took us over the Penobscot Narrows Bridge -
a truly lovely new cable-stayed bridge that has wonderful views of Fort Knox, Maine, and of Bucksport, Maine, and of the confluence of the Penobscot River with the Penobscot Bay.

The bridge is one link from the mainland to Verona Island. This picture shows the new bridge and its observation tower, with the old bridge in the background.

After our brief stop there, we made our way to Portland and arrived just in time for an early dinner at DiMillo's. DiMillo's is a former ferry boat that has been made into a restaurant. They have fabulous seafood dishes and an amazing bread pudding. Plus, you get to watch the activity in the harbor while you eat. We got to see several tall ships arrive, drop their sails, and moor during our dinner. It is a favorite of ours. From DiMillo's, we made our way to the Hampton Inn in South Portland. This place, too, is a favorite of ours. The rooms are nice and the staff is excellent. When we traveled with Papa Bear's father, they would accept delivery of oxygen equipment for us, as well as packages that contained what we did not pack in our suitcases, and they often put these into our rooms so that we had them available to us immediately.

After a restful night, we went to the jetport and had a nice flight to Chicago. I purchased a paperback book by Jennifer Weiner - Best Friends Forever- that I enjoyed greatly during the trip. In fact, I enjoyed it so much, I purchased her newest book (in hard cover!) on the way back. O'Hare Airport has this wonderful moving walkway between concourses - well, it is a pretty ordinary walkway but they have their wonderful light show on the ceiling with colorful fluorescent tubes. I really enjoyed this unexpected and beautiful touch to our airport adventure. We decided to take a shuttle to the hotel, checked in, and connected with Friends from Virginia who were also there for the wedding.

That evening, after a quick purchase of some umbrellas, we took the 'L' to the rehearsal dinner at La Bocca della Verita. We connected with others there and then had a fabulous dinner. The 'L' took us back to our hotel, where we had to supply our name and room number via a speaker to the front desk to be allowed to enter. A night's rest (we slept until 9 a.m.!) and then Mama Bear went for a walk (and purchased a lipstick and some stockings, both of which she had neglected to pack) and Papa Bear read. Mama Bear saw some of the filming of the next Transformers 3 movie. It is amazing how they can take an ordinary street and dress it to look like a major disaster just happened. Prior to the wedding, we went to visit a friend of Baby Bear's, Goldilocks, who lives and works in Chicago. She picked us up from the hotel, drove us along the Magnificent Mile (amazing), along the lake (beautiful), and to her home. She had prepared a wonderful snack for us - fresh veggies and fruit with a yogurt dressing and an assortment of wonderful cheeses and crackers. It was fun to catch up with her, hear her plans, and also connect with Boo Boo (Baby Bear and Boo Boo were staying with Goldilocks.) Boo Boo had been to the Cubs game that afternoon. Goldilocks then took us to the wedding at The Dank Haus.






The ceremony was on a rooftop with the downtown Chicago skyline in the background. The reception was in a lovely room inside that had been decorated in the colors of the wedding. The ceremony was lovely and personal to the Bride and Groom: they obviously put a lot of work into making it both lovely and meaningful to them. The singer did a fantastic jazz number and the flower girls spontaneously joined her and began dancing, which added to the celebration and the song. The Celtic blessings by The Bride's uncles were warm and stirring. The reception had food that was "a Taste of Chicago" to which everyone helped themselves. It was fabulous: both Mama Bear and Papa Bear exclaimed over the deep dish pizze and Baby Bear loved the macaroni and cheese!! There was also barbeque and other foods that I do not recall other than their being so, so, so, very wonderful to eat!!

The Bride and Groom had their first dance, which was both fun and very well done: it was obvious some practice to do it had been involved, but it was fun, tasteful, and very well done.




The Bride and Group had asked people to wear pink and/or orange, and so the gathering was a sea of color and light, including these wonderful shoes on the dainty feet of a friend. Mama Bear learned that The Bride had made her gown (and the lower tiers of lace and fabric came off to give her a short dress for dancing) and The Bride's Mother made the fabulous cake!! Good food, good friends, good music: it was a fun time for relaxing, reconnecting, and celebrating.





Mama Bear and Papa Bear had an early departure at the airport, so we journeyed back to the hotel on the 'L' with our Friends from Virginia and we managed to get back before what we were calling the "hotel curfew", so we did not have to supply our names and room numbers. We arose early, went to the airport, and spent a fair amount of time providing them with our checked bags (we had done the online check-in, so we only needed stand in a very long line and do another online check-in to accomplish this task - and the ONLY thing people in this line were doing was giving them their bags - these people had all checked-in online and had boarding passes), and then going through security. I went through one of what they call the "backscatter" scanners (which I think pretty much shows all of you to whomever views the pic), flew back, and drove home. After feeding The Cat, we went to dinner at Top of the Hill in Southwest, which is rated #1 on Trip Advisor at the present time.

Today we slept in, Mama Bear did her walk/run in our really blowing wind, and we will soon go to the grocery store.