So there we go leaving the reception in style on our first car ride as a married couple on August 2, 1992. The Continental was owned, restored and driven (in an appropriate chauffeur’s uniform) by a friend of Jennifer’s father.
Our ceremony and reception were at the Portofino Inn and Yacht Club in Redondo Beach, California. We weren’t sailors (and with the way I get sick, we definitely still aren’t), but the site worked well for us since we didn’t want to do a church ceremony. The ceremony was presided over by Paul Egly, a relation on Jennifer’s side who was a judge and could legally perform the ceremony for us. At the reception, we had a band that is a fixture at almost every event in the South Bay area, the “Official” band of Manhattan Beach, the Hyperion Outfall Serenaders. During the dance, my sister, who was dancing with my dad, started faux slam-dancing with us, purposely bumping into us on the floor; naturally we returned the gesture in kind.
There are always problems that happen on special days like this, and the one that stands out to me is that my ring was sized just a tiny bit small and didn’t quite fit on the proper finger. So it went on my pinky finger for the rest of the day. It’s still a bit small, but it’s now on the correct finger.
Our flight out wasn’t until the next morning, so for our escape, we just asked for a ride around Redondo, Hermosa and Manhattan Beach, then returned to the Portofino for the night. The next day we flew to Seattle where we spent most of a week, then drove to Vancouver for a few days and then back to Seattle. We had reserved a small rental car for our time there. We got to the rental counter and allowed another family to go ahead of us. Naturally, the other family got the convertible while we got a new Pontiac Bonneville. Our rental was so new that it didn’t have a license plate yet; I asked at the counter if it would be a problem since we were planning to drive to Vancouver. The rental agent didn’t see it as a problem since the car had all the registration paperwork and a temporary registration sticker (from Nevada) in the rear window. Everything was fine but as we left Vancouver and drove south toward the border to go back to Seattle, we were pulled over. I guess two twentysomethings in a new car with no license plate heading for an international border might have looked suspicious, but after we showed the officer the paperwork, we were sent on our way. There were a lot of other little adventures on this trip too that I’ll save for future posts.
We’ve had many adventures over these 20 years, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the next 20.
Oh, and the photo above might look like it’s in just another parking lot, but you see that big orange van in the lot? That was the 1977 E150 van that my parents bought new and kept running until just a few years ago. We called it “the pumpkin.” I remember riding in the back of it as a stripped van when it was brand new on the way home from the dealership. It took our family on a number of cross-country vacations and it’s the vehicle that I used to earn my driver’s license. That van shows up in many of my memories, so I’ll definitely have more on it later.
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