With the wedding fast approaching and the cake plans fully covered, we had just small bits and pieces till the wedding itself. The main thing was that Heidi was going to keep the tradition of not seeing me till the wedding from the night before. I wasn’t all that happy about it, since my friends were working pretty much the day off and the day before, so I settled in to an night alone on the couch. My last night as a legally single man, spent on the couch, watching tv, with Heidi’s teddy bear Bigfoot for company (yeah I am sure you have seen a few photos of the culprit floating around). Thrilling!
Wedding morning rolls around and I spend the morning taking a run around the streets to clear my head. A quick oatmeal breakfast and it was time to get the cake transported. I barely had time to breat with that done to head over to a friends place to iron my shirt (since we don’t have an iron) and then by the time that was finished I had under 90 minutes before I had to get some flowers, head home and get ready for the wedding and be out of the house. Heidi wanted to use our apartment as the staging ground for getting ready, fine with me but traffic on the 405 and a failed attempt at getting some flowers meant I had to rush to get ready 🙁
I made it out of the house by the assigned time and headed over to the Museum of flight. I was able to calm myself down by meeting the designer of the 747 and the Boeing Chief Pilot who were there to give a talk on 747 day. Unfortunately they wouldn’t have been able to be present for the wedding (how amazing would it be to have the designer of the 747, sign my wedding certificate as a Witness!), but just getting a chance to meet them was truly an honor.
I was able to take that time to shock a few friends who didn’t know about the wedding as here I was at the Museum in full suit & tie. Truly loved shocking people with the whole “I’m getting married in the first 747”, lots of fun! After the talk it was only a short time before Heidi arrived and we were off to get our photos taken. We wanted to do our photos before the ceremony due to light. The moment I saw Heidi, I was gobsmacked…. I had never seen her look so beautiful in my life. I wanted to take in that moment forever! With the wedding photos about to get started, I had not expected someone else to show up but an Aviation Journalist colleague of mine, Jeremy turned up. It was a shock to him as I said to him “What are you doing here” “Shooting a wedding for USA Today” “O, I guess that’s my wedding you’re shooting!”
We spent the next while getting photos taken all over the museum, with planes, with statues, goofy, serious, everything you would expect. We slowly and progressively moved our way from one side of the museum to the plane itself. The museum shut at 5pm and once that was done, we had free reign of everything in the Air Park and RA001 for an hour. We had a blast getting some photos, but there was serious business. We got set up on the main deck, in the nose of the aircraft and the ceremony began once Heidi and worked her way up the stairs:
The wedding went off greatly, we read our vows (which we had written obviously) from Safety cards (we couldn’t find any 747 ones, so went with what we had, two Southwest 737 cards) and we signed our marriage certificate on the original design model of the 747. After some more photos of everyone and our first as a married couple, we headed away from the museum to Dinner at a restaurant in Columbia City. Nothing huge just a small family style dinner to celebrate the day. Cake was had, food was consumed (which for Me & Heidi was some of the first that day) and much fun was conducted. Heidi & I finished our wedding night off by walking across the street for ice cream at Full Tilt, because nothing says the end of our day like Ice Cream.
