So what if I kinda worship Gio a little bit. He's badass. And I find his OCD reassuring.
Gio's now-wife, Whitney, is about a perfect a mate as any guy could ask for. She's gorgeous, intelligent, loving, patient, classy and quite likely the most thoughtful person I've ever met.
And the two of them together, with him stealing rubs on her butt and her melting into his eyes, it's just the way it should be... the definition of a love that doesn't make you sick.
Gio and Whitney went to college together, I think at Carlton or some similar liberal arts school that cultivates ridiculously talented people, and all their pals from that era of their life made the trek to the wedding to celebrate the love they watched blossom over four years. And they brought poems and songs and speeches to offer the couple that made the rehearsal dinner feel more like a grown up talent show.
Oooohhh, that rehearsal dinner, mmmmm. Mojitos and homemade gelato and seeing all those people I fell in love with in LA again. I hope Gio and Whitney had as much fun as I did... although I'm pretty sure their night didn't end with them swimming in their underwear and driving home with a towel on their head and wearing Mack's shirt.
The wedding day started with breakfast with Jordan, Jolia, David and Kathy, other work buddies and their fascinating wives, at this awesome place called The Farmer and the Cook. Everyone at our table was vegetarian/vegan except for David and Kathy, and the table next to us, three young people whose prettiness shouldn't be natural, were on a raw diet. The girl had brought her own magic concoction of nuts and health, so she let us have a sample. And then I had one more thing to add to the list of What Makes California So Awesome.After breakfast, we decided to go for a short hike and ended up looking over the Ojai valley behind an orange grove. The valley runs east-west so it gets sun all day and in the evening, when the sun sets, everything gets bathed in a pink light.
I planned to see that pink light emerge during the wedding.A shuttle took us up into the mountain to this mansion that had rose gardens that would make the queen in Alice in Wonderland jealous. We watched Gio and Whitney exchange vows that made me cry about 14 times, and the minister, their friend Tessa who was ordained on the internet, told a story of a note Gio had written to Whitney when they were college about the two of them being whales off Baja California making a life journey together.
See, Gio can predict the future.
After the wedding ended, Mack and I wandered around the grounds drinking Negra Modelos and ended up perched on a rock that overlooked a junkyard. The 200 other people carried on with wedding chit chat behind us, but we soaked up the sunshine and took word adventures into our dream life.
Eventually it was time to eat delicious food, play around with the photo booth they had, and take a look at the popsicle cart, which had such flavors as avocado. Then it was cake and dancing and swirling and drinking so many Negro Modelos that every time I walked up to the bartender, he'd automatically hand me two of them.I wonder if his birthday is also May 16.
We had to get back to LA pretty early in the morning on Sunday so we could see Mack's mom, who had been working all week, so we packed up and headed out. Mack decided he wanted a cup of coffee for the road and zipped our Ford Focus into a corner coffee shop. And by zipped I mean rammed the curb and popped the tire on our rental.We had a brief pit stop that allowed Mack to show off some of his man skills and let me relish our good fortune at being held up in such a magical place.
Then we were on our way back to real life, knowing that we're not as good at marriage as Gio and Whitney will be but we're getting pretty good at making it through the rough spots without killing each other. And that's probably the most important part of happily ever after.
