It's a nice day for a black wedding.

For the first time in years I went to a Goth wedding yesterday. The happy couple are two ladies, friends of the Tickler's. The Tickler was the only member of the wedding party who lives nearby, and the none-too-organized brides either couldn't or wouldn't hire professionals to do much, so the Tickler ended up shouldering a disproportionate share of the burdens of wedding prep. One of brides is a graphic designer with an... artistic temperament, and shortly after I arrived on Saturday night, this bride had gone full Bridezilla, insisting that the napkins be ironed. I extracted my girlfriend and took her out for badly needed tacos and cocktails. Needless to say, the Tickler & I didn't get up to any shenanigans that night, and I'm OK with that.

The Tickler made us a big, tasty brunch yesterday from ingredients that her previous houseguest had left behind. ♥!

The wedding venue was "the Manor", a vacation rental near Olympia, WA that's fortuitously close to the Tickler's place. There are horses & sheep on the property. The mercifully brief ceremony was held in the woods next to the horse pasture; the aisle was lined with carved pumpkins, each one different. The wedding reception was in a barn. An outdoor wedding in western Washington state in October is a gamble, but we got lucky with the weather: no rain on the day of, and even a rainbow.

The wedding processional march? Chopin's funeral march. And the food? From a food truck. None of my elder Goth friends were ever that cheezy. The aesthetics & decorations, though? Right on. And one of the major attractions of a Goth wedding is seeing what people wear; the crowd did not let me down. Boozes and louche conversation were had. The whole trip seems to have gotten better as time wore on.

Oh: I got to carpool with the lady at whose place the Tickler & I may be staying in London. She's all right.

Oh oh: I wore the Sydney outfit, with the hat. I asked the Tickler if black lipstick was too much, and she said not for this wedding. She turned out to be entirely correct.

So if I should ever knowingly find Ms. Right and she's into the whole wedding thing - hey, I still believe the universe owes me a wedding in which I wear a dress - I have resolved to:

1. In close consultation with Ms. Right, make a goddamn to-do list. The brides above didn't, thereby wasting my girlfriend's time despite her best efforts.
2. Get a big enough posse of locals that executing that list doesn't burn anyone out. That shouldn't be too hard for me.
3. Do all the things in a timely manner. I'm pretty sure I can handle this, too.
4. Refuse to morph into Bridezilla, no matter what happens. For heaven's sake, I'm old enough to know better.

Yeah, I already have an esthetic picked out.