"If I Fell"

 I did a drive to St Pete over the past weekend. My primary goal was to attend a wedding and I also wanted to visit my great friend who I have not seen since COVID hit in 2020. My visit to her was long past due, and the wedding gave me the impetus to make the drive.

I took this skyline photo on Sunday on a walk out on St Pete Pier. (I plan to do another post about that)

I woke up early Saturday, April 18, and did two things I normally don't do since I have retired. I put on socks and a tie. The drive to St Pete had gotten worse since the last time I did it, and being older did not ease the pressure of fast highway driving. Three nerve wracking hours.

The wedding was at 11 AM in Saint Paul's Catholic Church in the heart of Saint Petersburg. It's a beautiful church on a small block of land that includes a school. I went to Saint Mary's Catholic School in Middlebury Vermont for six years.

All the inside-the-church photos were taken with my phone. I had brought my nice camera but I felt uncomfortable bringing it into the church. Must have been something I learned at Saint Mary's or it was just a weird thought. The phone camera turned out alright.

The groom was my nephew (actually cousin once removed) Reid. He looked handsome in his tuxedo and did not seem too nervous. There is a long story about this wedding but I am not sharing that here. Ask me about sometime.

The mother of the Groom, Pam, is my first cousin and lives near me in Florida. That is the reason I know Reid so well. Here she is pre-wedding, as Reid goes over some things with the Priest.

The bride, Claudia, was walked down the aisle by her father. That is her mother on the right taking the photograph. I did get names of all the people there but I have forgotten most of them. To be safe, I won't guess at any of them. It was a small wedding with only 15 people in the Church including the Priest and Organist.

Claudia and Reid doing the vows. Claudia's family is from Colombia and Spanish is their primary language. Interestingly, the Mass was done both in English and Spanish. Even the Priest did both languages. It truly made it an unique ceremony. I need to learn more than "Cervesa" as my only Spanish.

There was a photographer...I felt someone should take her picture but she lifted her arm. Maybe she is camera-shy.

There were times Claudia's father and Reid's mother were on the altar doing readings, he in Spanish and Pam in English. And there was a time they both were there.

This is the final Blessing by the Priest and he then announced them Man and Wife.

There was a big garden next to the Church where they did some photos and then we left for a wedding reception lunch. That is Reid's father Rick in the blue shirt with his brother behind him. The others are Reid, cousin Pam, cousin Jim and his wife Janis.

We went to Reid's home to consolidate cars before heading downtown for lunch. Here is Janis and Jim in the front yard...

Lunch was at the Parkshore Grill, a well awarded restaurant on Beach Drive. The newly married Reid and Claudia and some family.

After lunch, we headed back to Reid's house for the final wedding celebration. There was champagne, cake and some gifts. I plan to send them a card real soon. The home was an interesting design, and they still need more furniture. But it did seem very much like a Home...

Other attendees included Claudia's brother (on left) and her two Grandmothers, who did not understand English. They missed all my great jokes...

I was able to cross over to my other reason for the St Pete trip and I got my friend Teresa to come over for a few drinks. She was allowed to visit since she was a FSU graduate just like Reid. Go Seminoles!

My cousin Jim seemed to enter another dimension in this photo as the happy couple prepared to cut the cake.

As Jim finally disappeared completely. the cake was cut and lovingly smashed.


After cake, I left with Teresa to meet up with some of her family, but that is a different post...

Congratulations to Claudia and Reid!!!

About Title

This is probably my favorite Beatles song. The harmonies are so beautiful.

Listen to Song on YouTube

"If I Fell" is a song by English rock band the Beatles which first appeared in 1964 on the album A Hard Day's Night in the United Kingdom and United States, and on the North American album Something New. It was written primarily by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. "That's my first attempt at a ballad proper... It shows that I wrote sentimental love ballads way back when", Lennon stated in his 1980 Playboy interview. Paul McCartney stated that he contributed to the song: "We wrote 'If I Fell' together."

Lennon and McCartney shared a single microphone "for their Everly Brothers-like close harmonies".

Like much of the Beatles' early work, the song was released in two different mixes for mono and stereo. Lennon's opening vocal is single-tracked in mono but double-tracked in the stereo mix.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More New Restaurants

Image
Tuesday would have been my father's birthday if he were still with us. Dad liked to eat at diners and places that served home cooking. Of course, my mom was the greatest home cooker around. So, in memory of my father, I drove to West Melbourne to have a late lunch at Ethel & Fred's Entree Restaurant. It is located in the Metro West Shopping Center at the corner of Wickham Road and US 192 (New Haven Avenue). Outside of Ethel & Fred's I remember there use to be a Draft House Theater, a place where you could order beer and food while watching a first run movie.  Every other row of seats were tables. Gret place. But that was then....this is now.... White Board with Specials of the Day I got in to the Restaurant around 2 PM. It is only open until 3 and the crowd was very thin.  It took them a while to see that I was there. They lose a point for that. They did have a whiteboard with the specials for the day, and I liked what I saw. The place is wide open, not gr...
Read more

"Tell Me What You See" (Digital Hoarding XVI)

Image
 I will admit, that my digital hoarding has become such that I cannot remember any more the details of each photo I have stashed away on my hard drive. At my age, my data storage (aka brain) is deleting things to make room for new things. So let me go through another group of photos, not taken by me but either sent to me, scanned from a hard copy, or just pulled off the internet including from Facebook. Here we go, let us start with a few personal photos I have saved. Personal I actually found this photo in my sister Pat's yearbook and scanned it in. This was the Junior Miss pageant held at Middlebury Union High School. Patsy is sitting second from right, next to neighbor and friend Trudy. Well, I'll be damned, this is a photo I took. My friend Mac Monroe is pulling out some wine. His children rented a house for Thanksgiving and invited me over for the festivities. This would be the last time I see Mac as he passed within a year of this photo. My friend Nancy went to Korea with...
Read more

Photo Memory - BJ with others

Image
As I continue to scan in all the photos I have collected over the years, I have continually modified the way I am trying to organize the photos. I have created groups by individuals, and of course central to that are photos of me. I have shared some of the single photos of me on Facebook, and I would like to share here a few of photos of me with others. The first photo is me, not even four months old, being held by my Grandmother, Helen Rheaume Shackett. I know the photo was taking at our Weybridge Street house in Middlebury by the banister behind us. The stairs are steep in the Provoncha house, and many a drunk fell down those stairs into the cactus my mom kept at the bottom. Tom moved the bathroom from the second floor to the first when he purchased the house, so now only those spending the night get to go up those stairs. BJ with Grandma Shackett The next photo is when I turned one in the summer of 1958. I lived at the Weybridge St house all my life through high sch...
Read more