Weekend in the Berkshires, Part 2

I can barely describe the many layers of thoughtfulness, style, and significance that permeated the wedding of Meredith and Andres at Mass MOCA. Suffice it to say, there were many. We enjoyed the Klezmer band that played traditional music throughout cocktail hour, the ceremony, and the first part of dinner before switching to covers suitable for dancing. We relished the "Pfoho fizz," a special cocktail whose origins have something to do with the Harvard dorm (Pforzheimer) where Meredith and Andres lived for three years. We oohed and aahed over the ketubah, commissioned from an artistic uncle whose use of color and whose layout created a document unlike any we'd seen before. And we were impressed by the skillful, respectful combination of various Jewish and Chinese traditions during the service, which took place among the museum's exhibitions, saving us the $15 entrance fee (of course, there was much, much more to see). As evidence of the service's hybridity, the chuppah (supplied by the groom's Taiwanese parents) had been hand-embroidered with Chinese characters. Beautiful.

The wedding was also fun - the band was great, the food was delicious, and it was nice to experience a purely social event with many of my classmates. When we finally left the party, Maggie and I walked (!!!) through the rain back to our host's house, giving us time to digest and rehash all our favorite moments.

The next morning, we were up fairly early and had breakfast at a new restaurant on Main Street before getting coffee at Brewhaha Cafe. Eventually we walked over to the hotel where the wedding party had stayed, said goodbye, congratulations, and thank you to Meredith, collected Matt and Madeleine (Frank had gone back to Boston with Tom the night before) and drove back to Ben's house.

We said goodbye to Ben, his roommate Annie snapped this photo, and we took off - in the wrong direction! But on purpose, as we wanted to walk around Williams College, located in Williamstown, 10 minutes west of North Adams. Williams was beautiful - and with property values in Western Massachusetts actually reasonable, I'd be more than happy to get a job there.

Finally, we arrived back in Boston around 3:15 in the afternoon, just in time to show our apartment to a prospective subletter for next year. And with that, our weekend getaway came to an end!