Wedding photos part III

Our professional photographer did not do as nice of a job as we could have hoped for. However, there were some bright spots in her often out-of-focus pictures, and so...(I apologize for the grainy downloads...these files post much fuzzier than those submitted by our clearly more talented friends and family...)

I love this shot of David and me. This was taken just before the rain came, among the vines and vineyard grapes. What an amazing couple we make!

This shot shows David trying to help me as I trip over my dress for what was probably the fourth or fifth time.

My family - (L-R) Pap-pap, Grandmom Lola, Jenn, ME!, Mom, and Dad

My new family - David, Tom, Olivia, and Helen

With our pseudo-family: Brian, Jane, the kissing Hokansons, Scott, Carol, and Ken

Getting silly with the bestest friends ever: Victoria, ME!, Elliot, and Kristen

With my mom and her sisters, Lisa (left) and LuAnn (right)

David and "the girls" (Karla, Angie, and Caira)

With the wonderful people at Sheldrake that made it all possible, Chef Sam and Jessica, our event coordinator

We will be going through all of the photos to make a "Best Of" DVD to mail to our family and friends. Let me know if you'd like one!

Wedding photos part II

As more and more photos come in, I will continue to post my favorites:

I stop to hug Mom before the ceremony begins (check out the awesome train on my dress!)

During David's vows, right before I started to cry

David insisted that Jane should escort Jenn at the end of the ceremony.

Jenn and me

David and his "girls", Angie, Jane, Karla, and Caira (L-R)

This was one of the best moments of dinner!  Here is Jane, scolding David for interrupting her as she gave her best matron speech.

Ken and Carol (David's "pseudo-parents", for lack of a better term) at dinner

Me with Elliot and Victoria

The classic "taking a photo of yourself" picture (with me and Victoria) taken by Kristen

Bryan and Dave sharing some guy love with Brian, with Jen (and the bouquet she caught!)

A wedding story in photos!

On June 28, 2009...

My sister (the maid of honor) and me, before we got our hair done.

Taming my beastly hair with the straightening iron!

We got married at Sheldrake Point Vineyard & Simply Red Bistro.

Elliot did a fantastic job ushering everyone.  Here he is taking my in-laws to their seats.

David and Jane (the best matron) walking to the front of the aisle.

My beautiful flower girl, Olivia.  She is my new niece!

Jenn in her rockin' maid of honor dress.  She was walking down the aisle in style!

My dad and I walking towards the aisle.  He is crying here, but I am laughing because I almost tripped (over my big dress) and fell. (Oh, and that is Kristen's arm - I think.)

Brian serenaded us all with a beautiful song called Bist du bei Mir, which he sung in German (the non-English part was very important to David).  He did such a nice job!  

Caira and Karla (L-R) read David's reading selection, called The Lovely Other Dinosaur.

Victoria read my reading selection, which was a poem called "Love."

Yay!  We are married!  Introducing Dr. and Mrs. Hokanson!

My in-laws, Tom and Helen, with Olivia (their grand-daughter).

Happy parents of the bride!

The place settings at dinner.

Cutting the cake started out amicably enough...

...until David nailed me in the face with cake!  

He also got my skirt dirty too :(

But I got over it :)  Thanks to Jane and Ken for these pictures.  More photos to come once we hear back from our professional photographer.

Just married!

Hello my friends! I promise to post many photos (after I look at all of them, that is!) and details about our beautiful wedding and very relaxing honeymoon...but first, I must catch up on experiments!!! Until a later date (probably later this week, so you won't have to wait too long), I will tie you over with the only two pictures I've had a chance to look at:

Jane took this picture of David and me by the lake after the rain had stopped and the sun began to set.


My dress took up so much space! Victoria snapped this as I walked down to the cocktail hour, just before the rain began...

TO BE CONTINUED SOON!! :)

Lots of love, Mrs. Hokanson

11 days!

My blog posts have been lapsing in part because I find it incredibly hard to talk about anything else other than the fact that I will be getting married to an absolutely wonderful man in just 11 days! Things for the wedding are coming together so well! We got our marriage license on Monday, so things are starting to feel very official.

It turns out that getting married is a tremendous distraction these days, especially while I am in lab. I find it much more fun to play with the layout of our programs or arrange our seating chart than to do any experiments. Luckily, I went to a conference in Andover, NH last week, so I was forced to think about science for extended periods of time for at least a week of June...

The conference overall was a really great experience. Instead of just following professors around all week, I met other students in my field and had a great time hanging out with them. Two of them were from the UK, and were incredibly excited to see chipmunks for the first time! (Apparently they don't have this American novelty animal across the pond.) Some other things that happened in NH:

1. Across from the school that we were staying at, there was a skateboarding park with a set of rules posted about safe skateboarding. Can you guess what rule #1 was? If you guessed wearing a helmet, you would be wrong. Rule #1: Only one child per skateboard at all times. This is rule #1?? How many times has this been broken? And in what ways? (Picturing two kids trying to ride one skateboard makes for a pretty funny mental image, though.)

2. The Andover fire house had a sign posted outside of it stating the chances of fire for the day. While we were there, the chance was MODERATE. That seemed pretty high to me...if someone told me something had a moderate chance of happening, I'd assume at least 50/50. Luckily, moderate chance or not, there were no forest fires while we were visiting there.

3. I gave a really successful talk on Wednesday afternoon. I was SO nervous. Pretty much every famous professor in my field was watching as I talked about my research for 10 minutes. I am gauging my success on the positive feedback I received throughout the day, and I am so appreciative that people were so nice. It's amazing how even a "nice job" or "great talk" can really boost a student's confidence. I am feeling good about my August committee meeting presentation already!

Did I mention...11 days??? :)

I love that dirty water / Oh, oh Boston you're my home

Memorial Day weekend was a whirlwind of travel and adventure as David and I hit the road to New England for Anna's wedding. And so, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Londonderry, NH...


The lovely bride and groom, Anna and Garrett Yurza Warfield!

Anna's shoes (as always) were awesome :)

On Saturday, we stopped in Westborough to hang out with Brian and Jane, and Jane fulfilled her duties as best man by helping David pick these shoes out to go with his tuxedo. David decided to start breaking them in by wearing them around the apartment on Monday evening. I think the funniest part of seeing him break in the shoes was that he made sure to put dress socks on first.

We were pleasantly greeted by a lobster sale at TOPS for $5.99/lb upon our return to Ithaca on Monday! What better way to end a trip to New England than to have lobster for dinner? We bought three and had ourselves a feast.
These are our lobsters before we cooked them...

Here is David, enjoying his lobster.

The lobster shells were the thickest I have ever seen! Despite the fact that we were armed with the awesome new lobster crackers that Victoria bought me as a shower gift, they were almost no match for these seemingly indestructible creatures. David actually had to hammer one of the lobster's claws in order to free the meat!

As always, being back in the Boston area among friends and familiar places continues to remind me of my desire to return there someday and have a home of my own. Until then, I will have to settle for returning there in a week or so for the Gordon Research Conference on Molecular and Cellular Bioenergetics, which will be held at Proctor Academy in Andover, NH.

P.S.

After Kris' AWESOME performance of one of my favorite Kanye songs, I do not see how Danny could make it into the final two over Kris!