Allie's Wedding Weekend

This past weekend, Rachel appeared at the altar next to her best friend Allie. Allie and Phil had their wedding at a place in Pittsburgh called the Union Project. It is an old church that was in severe disrepair before some folks bought it and started fixing it up. The church is not yet finished being restored, but it is close, and is now being used as a community center of sorts. During the restoration, the owners gave classes on how to restore stained glass. In these classes, the students made the windows needed for the church. Now nearly all of the windows have been restored, and the church is quite beautiful. They are still working on installing lights, and pews. Instead of big church chandeliers, they have two strings of construction lights going from the altar to the back of the church. Instead of pews, they have a slew of mismatched chairs that were donated from area coffee shops. The result is a very artsy looking church with a personality found no where else. Allie and Phil are the very kind of people to have a wedding in a setting like this. While it might have taken a good bit of courage to hold a wedding in a half finished church, with Allie's artistic eye, the result was amazing. They asked me to take candid pictures for the wedding. Out of the over 600 pictures I snapped during the two days before the wedding and the day of, I only kept 416. Of those, these are the keepers.

On Thursday night, a bunch of the Pittsburgh friends hung out on Mt. Washington.

A picture of the additional lighting Phil and Allie used and a view of the restored windows.

Phil and Allie after the rehearsal. I know it's blurry, but for some reason, I really like this photo.

Phil and Allie horsing around at the rehearsal dinner.

On Friday night Dave, Phil's best man, took all the guys out on Pittsburgh's three rivers in a charter boat.

Allie's beautiful dress. I love the green ribbon around the waist.

Rach looked SO good. I didn't realize until I looked at this picture what a wrinkled mess my tie was.

Mia Buren, the flower girl smells a bouquet with her mom.

A shot of the service. The tables were covered in multi-colored table cloths.
You can see the construction lights that hang somehow beautifully in the middle of the church.

Phil and Allie just after they walked down the aisle.

The only two dancers at the reception. (It was a non-dancing reception, but they were just so cute.)

Phil and Allie on their way to the car.

Phil and Allie driving off the hotel.

Rach and I spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday together. We had some wonderful times walking the dog to the local coffee shop, and addressing envelopes. (The wedding invitations should be out later this week.) Then, last night, I spent the evening on "The Veranda" at my boss KTT's house. She is a great boss, and occasionally invites friends over to spend time on her little porch next to her house. I'm not sure porch is the right word really, it's more like a fenced off alleyway with an old busted air conditioning unit rusting in the back corner. But, she strung up some lights, found a make-shift bar in one of the buildings here at WJU, and set up a table. Now we have "The Veranda." And it makes for a really wonderful weekend. We have had a few parties out there lately. We cut up some cheese, break open a bottle of wine or two (the front half of her house is a wine store), throw some LPs on the record player, and talk and laugh for a long, long time. Usually it's after midnight before we head inside. I found it quite exciting when we broke uncorked a $60 bottle of dessert wine that Dominick (The store owner) was offering for people to taste. We all poured ourselves just enough to get a flavor on our lips, and tore open a box of Little Debbie's Swiss Cake Rolls. We sipped ever so slowly at the expensive wine, and peeled the chocolate off of the swiss cake rolls. It was wonderful.