Joel and Sandra's wedding

My friend of almost 25 years, Joel, got married yesterday and I had the winning lottery ticket as his best man (Joel was best man at my wedding ten years ago this December). Joel and his lovely wife Sandra are of course at the center of this photo, with the woman in red being Sandra's sister, Roberta, with her son Gabriel, next to her, part of the side of Joel's mom, Debra, is in the foreground, I'm to the right of Joel, and Bill Willingham, who married Joel and Sandra, is behind them.

Yes, it's THAT Bill Willingham, creator / writer of DC / Vertigo's multiple award winning Fables and Jack of Fables. How many people can say that they've been married by an acclaimed comic book writer (actually anyone can say they were married by a comic book writer, but they'd be lying)!? Joel asked Bill about a year ago if he'd perform the service and after Bill did some wrestling with Las Vegas officials on the legalese of his doing this (after all marrying people is a BIG business here in Vegas), he came out on top and the green light was given. Joel and Sandra got together with Bill to go over what they wanted said in the service and I hope the audio on the video recorder was working because it was a beautiful, unique ceremony.

I thought everything about the wedding / reception was fantastic and I don't think that's just my bias talking. Joel and Sandra's mothers looked beautiful, actually everyone took the dress code to eleven (Sandra made her own wedding and reception dress). Everything about the event including the decor of the hall, the music, the food, drinks, and the company of friends and family was spot on! Joel's dad, Ira, entertained us with some impromptu karaoke and I didn't entirely flub up my toast. If I had to do my toast after Sandra's sister's toast, I'm sure I would have been even more nervous because Roberta's toast was done with basically no warning and yet she gave an excellent toast presentation that had a lot of love with just the right sprinklings of humor. Much fun was had by all, there was much love in the room, and Joel and Sandra were looking like the happiest couple in the world.

I'm glad I got to meet Sandra's family including her mom, her sister Roberta and her husband, Edmund, and their cool sons Nikos and Gabriel and I look forward to seeing them in the future. I always enjoy visits with Joel's mother, Debra and her husband Wes, and being in the presence of Joel's father, Ira, I can appreciate that they're in the same ball club (to borrow some sports imagery). I especially want to thank my friends, many of whom I've know for almost as long as I've known Joel, for being my friends and for giving me the response I was going for with my toast and coming up to me afterwards and telling me that they enjoyed my toast even though I think I may have vibrated into some other dimensional plane (anyone who knows me, knows that I'm kind of a hyper person and that I'm not real comfortable talking in front of a group of people).

Joel and Sandra, ich wunschen sie viel Gluck in Ihr Verbindung and thank you for letting me be part of your wedding.
This is obviously Joel and Sandra in all their splendor.

And Bill Willingham is too busy to marry anyone else so anyone out there looking to be married by a high caliber comic writer should look elsewhere (although I guess if you supply Bill with a LOT of poker money he could be persuaded - grin)!