The weekend after the [L.A. Bachelor Party->], I returned to Los Angeles for Ross & Johanna’s wedding. This was a quicker trip than the last, but was a huge treat as well. [Ben Mengden->], his wife Emily, and I came in Friday morning and headed to the Tuxedo shop to pick up our formalwear. Fortunately, after the last weekend’s ineptitude, the shop had things well in hand for the actual wedding weekend, and we were able to pick up all of our uncomfortable and unfamiliar bits without any fuss whatever.We spent a bit of time wandering about the Third Street Promenade, a nice pedestrian-friendly shopping district, before scooting off to the rehearsal at Bel Air Presbyterian Church, a beautiful edifice sited on a hillside with a miles-long view of the valley stretched out below. The sanctuary featured a fantastic pipe organ along with a less-traditional JumboTron, on which I presumed the church staff replays successful conversions in slow motion. Once everyone had a good grasp on what was going on, we retired to Anna’s Italian restaurant for a marvelous evening of drink, talk, drink, toasts, drink, food and drink.

The next morning, Ben and I met up for a tasty breakfast with Ross, where we swapped stories and jabbered enjoyably for an hour. Once fed, we bid the groom farewell and headed off to the reception hall where we were conscripted to help put up decorations.

If I had sat down with the mission to come up with the most labor-intensive decorations possible, I could hardly have done better than what Ross’ mom had devised: lengths of real ivy, wrapped around strands of Christmas lights and festooned over the crown molding in giant swags. She had apparently gone around her neighborhood and swiped ivy from any source she could find, stuffed it all in two suitcases, and brought it all out (along with wasps and spiders, as we discovered) to California with her.

Once the decorating was more-or-less complete, we struggled through figuring out how all the parts and pieces of the tuxedos went together and headed to the church for the main event. Ross had procured sunglasses for all of us, so we did lots of Reservoir Dogs poses for the photographer before squirreling away into the back room to wait for things to kick off. The photographer was William Innes, who did a beautiful job capturing the highlights of the day. Here’s one of my favorites of Ross and I, in which I, against all odds, kind of look like a [note to my children: please avert your eyes now] badass:

The ceremony itself was lovely. Both Johanna and Ross were actually there, which caused some of the groomsmen to lose a bit of money. Johanna’s father, a minister from North Carolina, conducted the ceremony, obviously very happy for and proud of his daughter. Various family and friends read scripture, and everything went off swimmingly. Looking around at the people assembled, I was delighted to be a part of the constellation there to support the couple as they started a new chapter of life together.

We wrapped up the evening at the reception hall, dancing, eating, talking, drinking, and enjoying the ivy once more. I began to realize that I really was in a different world than the one I was used to when I started talking to some other people at my table. To my left was Brian. He was a writer for CSI: Miami. On my right was Ethan, who wrote for Eureka and now has a movie in production. To his right was his wife Deedee, who writes for Saving Grace. It was quite a different social milieu for someone used to being surrounded by programmers, though in some ways equally geeky.

Among the other interesting folks I got to meet: Andy Cosby, Ross’ production partner and creator of Eureka, Mark Waid, extremely prolific comic writer and extraordinarily nice guy, Michael Alan Nelson, notable comic writer and snazzy dancer, and Colin Ferguson, one of the stars on Eureka who earned my respect by chatting with Jordan (Ross’ 10 year old nephew) for 15 minutes or so at the reception. Ed Quinn, another of the leads on Eureka, was also at the wedding, though I didn’t have a chance to talk with him.

So, once again, congratulations to Ross & Johanna! May your marriage be richly blessed, and may you ever be support, encouragement, blessing, love and entertainment to one another.