It was Saturday the 28th of October, the day of Paul and Kate’s wedding, and the reason we’d travelled to Boston at this time. The wedding ceremony was commencing at 2pm and even allowing for getting-ready time, we had the morning to do some more sightseeing.
We had awoken to another beautiful Autumn day and a predicted temperature in the mid to high 20’s (Celsius). This was our third day in a row of amazing weather and we decided to make the most of it to make a visit to Harvard. As we were staying in Cambridge, it was a nice morning activity keeping us close to home.
Off to Harvard we go….
Soren had been feeling decidedly unwell the previous afternoon. We had initially assumed from his running up the stairs of the Bunker Hill monument a little too fast. However, he woke up still not feeling great, although was determined to go out and make it to the wedding. We thought we’d take him out for some sunshine and see how he pulled up.
Harvard is also situated in Cambridge so it was a fairly easy morning wander down to the Harvard campus, from our Cambridge apartment.
The walk to Harvard took us in a different direction than our, usual wander to the train station at Central. Again we admired the beautiful tree lined streets, classic houses and plenty of people out on bikes, including local bike police.
Pretty soon we made it to the the Harvard Cambridge campus and then proceeded to wander in various directions, admiring the buildings and having to constantly consult maps on our phones to see where we actually were.
The campus also had a lovely display of Autumn foliage, and plenty of bike paths and wide open spaces. We were visiting the Cambridge campus, but Harvard also has an Allston campus, in a Boston neighbourhood, just across the Charles River (which includes Harvard Business School and Harvard Stadium and many of the athletic facilities). There is also a Longwood Campus which houses the Medical, Dental and Public Health faculties and is in the Longwood area of Boston. The Cambridge campus is 85 hectares, the Allston campus, 145 hectares and the Longwood campus 8.5 hectares.
Why did the turkey cross the road….
We did spot many turkeys wandering around the campus and had to laugh as they slowly wandered across the road, on the pedestrian crossing. Cars stopped for them, unsurprised. Obviously wandering turkeys are not unusual in these parts.
We enjoyed a good wander around the very famous Harvard Yard, and past many of the colleges and residential houses. We were actually surprised at how much smaller the university is in campus size and also student numbers, compared to many of the large Australian universities. There are around 23 thousand students who attend Harvard and around two-thirds of these are post-graduate students. Each undergraduate intake is around 2,000 students, approximately 5% of those who apply!
We made it to Harvard Square and checked out a couple of the shops, including the bookstore (which was pretty well-stocked). Zinnia was feeling a bit weary at this stage and wanted to rest in the sun, before she was distracted with book shopping! Astrid also apparently had ‘run out’ of reading material and needed a new book or two.
A Zinnia in the wild….(or at least Cambridge)
We had to laugh when we found a jewelry and accessory store called Zinnia. Zinnia was stoked to see her name up in lights!
After an hour and a half of wandering around it was time to head back to the apartment and get ready for the big event. We had clocked up 5km of walking, which wasn’t all that much but in the interest of saving our legs, and some time, we caught the train back one stop to Central and grabbed a few lunch snacks for the kids before our walk back to our apartment.
Getting our finery on….
The dress code for Kate and Paul’s wedding was black-tie. We had assumed the weather was going to be a little on the cold side given it was very late October in Massachusetts. However, it was a corker of a day so our planned additions of tights, capes and cardigans for the girls weren’t even needed for the afternoon ceremony, and the boys were not looking forward to wearing suit jackets!
I hadn’t had time to get my nails done before leaving Australia so had run down to a local nail salon to quickly get some polish on, a bargain at $10 US. While Mikl decided he needed some one to shave his face fluff off (Anto wasn’t keen on that plan, so got to wrangle the kids into good clothes).
We were all ready on time, and looking pretty dapper. Ready to head off on the now familiar walk to Central station. It’s only about 800m but is significantly more challenging in heels, only a problem for Astrid and myself.
We were a tad over-dressed for your average Saturday afternoon train ride but we liked to think we were lifting the standard of Boston train stations!
Mikl and Soren certainly looked rather schmick on our train over the river to Boston. We were trying to minimise walking around in silly shoes and hot midday sun (again, not a problem we thought we’d have) so caught the train to South Station, which meant we only had a 700m walk across the Fort Port Channel to the church where the ceremony was being held.
Off to the Church……
It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, so aside from the less than comfortable shoes, it wasn’t an unpleasant walk across the water to the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Voyage Church, where the ceremony was being held.
Some passers-by figured we were off to a wedding (how would they have guessed?) and offered to take a photo of us on the bridge. We didn’t scrub up too badly!
Wedding time….
At the church, we’d been instructed to sit in the front row with Mikl and Anto’s Aunt Ann and Uncle Tony (parents of the groom). There were only a few relatives from Australia attending the wedding, so we had a seating promotion. It did offer us an excellent view, especially as we ended up in front of the groomsmen once they were seated for the ceremony!
As we waited for the 2pm ceremony to begin, Ann reminded us that it was being live-streamed back to Australia. Lorraine (aka Grandma of the kids) had said she would be up watching the wedding of her nephew, so we made sure we gave her a wave as we went into the church. She apparently did see us all, as she was blearily-eyed watching at 4am…..
Aside from my few quick church and train station selfies, I did not take any photos during the wedding ceremony. I was more than happy to be a guest and not the photographer for this event. Kate and Paul have kindly shared their wedding photos from their photographer Silver and Salt Photography. I’ve included a few in the gallery below. It was a beautiful ceremony and the bridge, groom, and bridal party all looked wonderful. You might notice that the bridal party was enormous at a total of 18!
Astrid, Soren and Zinnia have only attended a few weddings, and this was the first church ceremony they had attended so there were quite a few questions but they did behave very well and didn’t get us kicked out of our front row seats 😉
From part one to part two….
After the ceremony had wrapped up we jumped on one of the shuttles provided by Kate and Paul and headed off to Omni Parker House (the reception venue). Most of the guests were hanging out here for a few hours between the ceremony and reception, while the bridal party were off doing photos. Unfortunately for us we had to head back to Cambridge to get the kids settled in with their babysitter before we could return to the adults only reception.
The trip back on the train, and kilometre walk back to the apartment, in our finery was rather warm as it was now 26 degrees, and we were all getting sick of wandering around in silly clothes and shoes!
At 4pm we met Emily our babysitter for the evening. We’d had Paul and Kate’s help to secure a qualified kid-wrangler (with a post-graduate degree in Public Health, she was over-qualified) for the evening. We’d video chatted with Emily prior to leaving Australia and it turns out she was the regular babysitter for one of the bridal party, who happened to not need her that evening as they had grandparents to cover their kid-wrangling, so a bonus for us. The kids loved Emily and she’d promised to take them out to a park and to look at Halloween decorations and feed them pizza and icecream.
Off to the reception….
A quick change of outfit for me, into my black-tie reception appropriate full length gown. The boys didn’t need to get changed as they were in their finery all day. We declared we looked (and smelt) good enough for round 2, and decided to do a quick Uber back into Boston for the reception, the kids were more than happy for us to depart so they could get to their pizza and relaxing!
An evening at Omni Parker House
The reception was being held at Omni Parker House, a historic hotel in the centre of Boston. It was certainly a fine venue for a reception. The pre-dinner drinks started at 5pm up on the 14th floor rooftop bar. The view was certainly magnificient!
The hour of pre-dinner drinks flew by as we chatted with the rellies and a few of the other Aussies who had mad their way over from WA. There was a seafood and antipasti bar set-up so the boys were in heaven with all the seafood but I still found plenty of non-meaty stuff to eat. The sunset over the city from the balcony was rather spectacular.
The reception room was beautifully decorated. We were on table 5, with Ann and Tony and the small number of other Aussies (other than cousin Nadine who was bridesmaid and on the bridal table). I was too busy enjoying the food, speeches, amazing band, and great company and only took a few photos. The meal was lovely with a lovely caprese salad entree and an eggplant ricotta main for me. I believe Anto and Mikl had ordered the fish and said it was great. The wedding cake was Boston cream pie, which was famously invented by Omni Parker House.
With the fabulous band we enjoyed quite a lot of dancing. Ann and Nadine are definitely legends on the dance floor but Anto and I made sure we put our ballroom and Latin skills to good use and with plenty of drinks during the evening. I am fairly sure my quickstep was not up to our dance teachers standard but was rather fun.
As I took next to no photos, I will again share some of Kate and Paul’s official photos from Silver and Salt. It was definitely a fun evening for all of the guests and a wedding to remember!
Anto and I were rather sad when the band finished up just before 10.30pm, and the reception was drawing to a close. I did famously decide to sit down for a second, where there was no longer a chair, much to the amusement of Ann, Nadine, Anto and Mikl!
Apparently in Massachusetts you can only serve alcohol at a venue for 5 hours, so there was an official after-party at a nearby bar. We decided to head around the corner to the bar and had 1 more drink while we caught up with the bride and groom briefly, along with all our new and old Aussie and American friends. Unfortunately the night did have to draw to a close as while Emily had texted me updates saying the kids were happy and in bed hours ago, we figured she eventually wanted to get home and our babysitting bill was growing by the second.
We decided we weren’t going to allow Mikl to convince us to walk back over the bridge to Cambridge so an uber it was, after a long and very fun day..As it was after midnight in Boston but mid-Sunday afternoon in Australia, plenty of friends were amused by my rather drunk messaging. We had travelled quite a distance to attend the wedding, but it had definitely been one to remember and Boston had put on some amazing weather for us. We still had plenty of exploring to do in our remaining 5 days in Boston, although the weather definitely decided we’d had the best of it. Kate and Paul certainly lucked out with superb weather for their wedding day…….
Up next…..
There might have been some very post-big night out weary adults the next day but there was a post-wedding brunch Halloween costume shopping, dinners out with our fellow Aussies at an amazing Italian restaurant and Italian desserts in the North End.
