No pictures yet--we're still gathering them in from all our friends and relatives, since we didn't have a professional photographer there--but they will come!

Meanwhile, as of course I should have anticipated, the wedding was WONDERFUL. Sorry for the whiney jittery day-before entry! (I've thought about deleting it, but what the heck. Everyone's read it by now anyway, right?)

The wedding day was bright and sunny and joyful, friends from across England and America and as much of our extended family as possible all came to celebrate, and it was really the most perfect day possible. My family and all our friends from the neighborhood chipped in to decorate the village hall in the morning, and we got married at two o'clock in the beautiful Unitarian chapel in downtown Leeds. There were only twenty-two people there as guests, which made it a really intimate wedding--all the guests started out sitting in the choir pews at the front of the church, so we were literally surrounded by our friends and families throughout. The readings were perfectly and beautifully done, and I felt shivery with happiness and excitement as it happened, and we Were Married. (It really felt like that--there was one moment in particular that felt like a sea change, every molecule in my body shifting with the change.)

And the party afterwards was GREAT. One couple from our neighborhood contributed the food, which was a fantastic buffet of Indian food, and another couple contributed wine and beer. The wedding cake was absurdly cool, with its tiers supported by pillars, and it tasted really good. There were four big tables, and Patrick and I switched tables every so often so that we could get a chance to hang out with everybody who had come. It was amazingly fun. I laughed more than I have in months, and just felt filled with elation.

We just got back from our honeymoon in Scotland late last night. I'll have lots to write about that (and pictures to post!) soon, but not yet. In the meantime, Patrick's got the next week still off work, so we're enjoying a week of sheer relaxation, lazing around in the mornings and writing in the coffeeshops in town. No fiction writing on my side, surprise surprise!--I kept a journal during the honeymoon, but only wrote about one page of a new short story set (surprisingly enough) in Scotland. I'm feeling pretty relaxed about that, though. Patrick and I are still getting high off the sight of the wedding rings on each other's hands, and getting used to calling each other "husband" and "wife" instead of "partner" or "girlfriend/boyfriend". It's all just more fun than I could have imagined.

Thanks to everybody who wrote sweet comments and emails of congratulations!