Paul & Marieke's Wedding

We headed out into a shiny, sunny Amsterdam day, walking to the wedding in our fancy outfits, about 30 mins. My dad kindly mailed Joshua's seer sucker suit to the hotel, so he had something to wear. I had the brown dress Minh gave me just before we left. Paul and Marieke said they wanted the wedding to be casual, the email said to wear flip flops if we have them. We have them... I bought an orange necklace to match mine and Joshua's are blue, which match his seer sucker just perfectly. I didn't get any photos of us dressed up.

Relatively short, but heart-felt, sweet, and funny ceremony, in a really cool modern room in a very old building - and then we get into some boats with a load of friendly and cool strangers, bottles of champagne at hand. How better to get married in Amsterdam?

This guy is not part of the wedding party. He will drive one of the boats.

There were three boats, we were in the middle with the bridesmaids in front and the bride and groom and their families behind us. So we got some nice photos of the happy couple.

They were like royalty. Whenever we went under a bridge full of onlookers or passed a boat full of partiers, everyone cheered!

This is Varun, who Joshua worked with for a number of years. Most recently Varun has been living in London - telecommuting to ISI. We were out of champagne glasses, so he suffered using a bottle.

Some of the bridges are very low.

This is the Prinsengracht, very near our hotel. The tall church tower is the one nearest the Anne Frank house.

Park your bike like this

We disembarked right near the Rijksmuseum, and went into the park, where we ate outside at a restaurant. The food was fantastic - truly delicious.

Joshua & Varun

Paul and his dad

Luckily, while they were in a wedding stupor, Paul and Marieke offered to let us stay in their place while they were on their honeymoon, the following week. So we got to spend another day in the hotel, and then had a lovely dinner with them and a couple of guests we had met, Joe and Gully, before taking over their fantastic flat. Thank you Paul and Marieke!