Our First New York Wedding

The results from my first experience with a photo booth.

I spent the first wee moments of my 31st birthday Sunday trying to find a parking spot in Bay Ridge. That's because I -- who never, ever drives in New York (well, at least very rarely) -- was in charge of getting us back safely from a wedding reception in Dumbo.

And who was I to refuse? At least one of us could enjoy the open bar, and that wasn't going to be me.

In all reality, it wasn't that big of a deal. It wasn't even the smallest blemish on an otherwise lovely evening -- the marriage of one of Paul's neighborhood running/beer-brewing pals. It was our first wedding of a New York friend, and it felt like a milestone.

Since we've moved to New York, we've generally been invited to at least one or two weddings in Ohio, and we try to attend what we can, schedules permitting. Unfortunately, we've missed several we otherwise would have attended had we lived in Ohio.

But it was never any wonder that we'd been invited to that many, even if we couldn't physically be there for all of them. After all, we each spent 26+ years making and maintaining those relationships.

I certainly never thought we'd be in New York long enough to make friends good enough who would consider putting us on their guest list. It feels a bit like a breakthrough, or at least like we haven't just bided our time socially in the last five years.

So the photo booth at the wedding was just a bonus.