Wedding Daze

Oh, what a weekend I've just had...
Left work two hours early on Friday to make the trek to Parry Sound. This town of 6500 people on Georgian Bay was my second home for a time as a child and would be an ideal place to retire to...if it weren't for the price of real estate. Muskoka is moving northward at a rapid clip.
The occasion drawing me northward this time: my step-brother's wedding.
Eva and I wanted a weekend romantic getaway, because the house has otherwise sapped our vacation budget for the year. The wedding was held at Crane Lake Resort (www.cranelakeresort.ca), an absolutely stunning place about 45 minutes south and west of town. After 'beautiful', the first word I'd use to describe the place is 'isolated'. The road in there is full of twists and turns and forks, some of which were helpfully marked 'Jennie and Rob'...and others of which were not.
A word of caution before you book your honeymoon here: Crane Lake is a housekeeping resort, not an inn. The 'rooms' are three, four and five bedroom cottages, with full kitchens. If you've got a family and $1600.00 burning a hole in your pocket, have a great week.
Alas, we are two people with pockets already scorched.
So: just south of Parry Sound, the Jolly Roger Inn. Not my first choice...or my second...or my third. Booked, booked, booked solid. We were damn lucky to get in even here...according to the reservations agent I spoke with, oh, six weeks ago, we got about the third last room in the place.
The Jolly Roger Inn is so called because they really do give you a jolly rogering. I felt freshly deflowered after just one night there. A C-note a night got us a substandard room, smaller than most, with some unique features:

*A television that lacked movie channels but did have the patented 'epileptic-seizure tube' (EST) which would self-activate at not-quite random intervals (usually when it judged you would be most interested in the content onscreen)
*A 'dry shower'. These are really neat and I've only seen them in a few homes...I've never had to pay to use one before. What this is: you stand in the middle of the bathtub, turn the shower on, and remain dry. The water cascades all around you, making pretty prismatic patterns on the shower curtain, which then gloms itself to your ass. The water pressure was permanently set in the "I dare you to try and outpiss me" position...not that it mattered...as noted above, none of the water would actually hit you anyway.
*No bar fridge, but an air conditioner was included. Unfortunately, it was actually an air conditioner/humidifier, and I never did figure out how to change the setting from "tropical rain forest".
*You've heard of the European and the Modified American Plan? The Jolly Roger, fittingly enough, works on the Piracy Plan, to wit: enter the attached restaurant and have money pirated directly out of your pocket. A hundred bucks a night be damned. You've gotta pay for supper and breakfast too, and beware: the two meals look suspiciously alike. I warned Eva to expect Parry Sound Service, which is only slightly more laid-back than that of, say, Jamaica, but this place raised the gold standard. Waitresses have mastered the art of cruising past your table without looking at you.
Ah, well, the wedding.
It was an outdoor service overlooking the lake (and when I say 'overlooking', I mean it: the bridal procession damn near needed mountaineering equipment to get up that hill). The service was one of the shortest I've ever attended: not counting the signing of the registry, I do believe it clocked in at about seven minutes. But despite its brevity, it was incredibly moving. The vows seemed to be personalized and they brought a tear to my eye, to match the single solitary raindrop that fell on the service, thus conferring good luck on the bride and groom.
Rob and Jennie are a truly lovely couple.
This was the first reception I've ever been at where the groom himself provided the best speech. I think Rob's best man/emcee needed a liberal dose of Dutch courage to get through the evening.
Instead of clinking glasses, anyone wanting Rob and Jennie to kiss had to make a putt on a little putting green set out in front of the head table. Miss the putt and you'd have to kiss somebody yourself. Well, Dwayne shot most of his putts to miss...he has a crushing crush on one of the bridesmaids (who was, actually, ahem, kind of cute...shhh!)...and let me tell you, he never tired of putting!
Imagine me in grade nine. Now inebriate me. Yikes.

It was wonderful to attend. It was great to see family I haven't seen for years. I got to meet my stepsister's twelve-day-old boy, Ryan Raine Barager, and what a cute baby he is, let me tell you...almost as cute as his older sister Regan, the flower girl.

The trip back home was slightly elongated. The weather put one in mind of Arks, and overspray and ponding likely contributed to an eight-or-ten car pile-up south of Barrie that backed up traffic for miles. The prospect of worse ahead drove us off the 400 on to the back roads.

It's nice to get away for a romantic weekend (and what could be more romantic than a wedding?) but it's also nice to come home. Next week, we make the trip again, this time further north to Britt.