I say ketchup, you say catsup

Alright, catch-up time.

For anyone following my gomberg.com homepage, my last update was in December, 2005. I know: I stink at updates. I was writing at that time to report that I had just asked my girlfriend of 3 years to marry me and that she had accepted.

So what's been going on in the past 18 months? Well... I'm going to do some major posting here to bring you up to speed. 1 Topic each post so that we can break things down a bit into more digestible chunks.

Ew. Sorry, proceeding....

Wedding
We waited a good month to let the reality of the engagement sink in before even thinking about the wedding plans. This was both good and bad, because those of you who have been through this blissful and insane period in your lives will know that locations and vendors book up fast, sometimes a year in advance. What it did do was allow us to thank all of the well-wishers and advice-givers in relative peace and comfort without feeling like we needed to rush into everything and end up with someone else's idea of a great wedding.

The first step was location hunting and after several weekends we decided upon The Victorian in Santa Monica. There was some parental hesitation because it could only seat 180 (150 comfortably and even then a little cramped) but we had fallen for this place so we eventually moved forward with everyone's blessing. The date we had picked was September 2nd and Vendors were all wrapped by the end of March. Or was it May?

The big day arrived quickly and was everything we hoped it would be. My wife and I had the time of our lives and hoped that our guests did as well. We certainly received a number of compliments over how well everything turned out and how much fun people had. We had really wanted to imbue the night with a bit of our own quirky selves and so we had a few personalized surprises such as the dinner music being songs from movie soundtracks; everything from Pirates of the Caribbean to "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" in Monty Python's Life of Brian.

The wedding really turned out to be a full weekend affair thanks to a Friday night rehearsal dinner and Sunday brunch thrown by my parents. Coupled with the "big day" (props given generously to my Mother-in-Law), it was truly a whirlwind weekend for my wife and I, made even more special by the friends and family who shared it with us (both personally and vicariously). Thank you.