Mostly a bachelorette party

These are pictures from the bachelor/bachelorette party that was organised by Rishad and Marie the Monday before the Wedding. Julia drove in from Cape Breton that day with Calin and Susanne. I drove down from NB with Crystal, Joey and Marlene. It started at 4ish at Rishad's place with an awesome barbeque of several different marinated meats and coordenating dipping sauces; and of course tons of beer, wine and booze.

Rishad (with help from Ian, Rhiannon et al.) truly outdid himself with the variety and deliciousness of the food. This was no frozen burger and hotdog shindig - we had lamb, chicken, and pork skewers, all with their own delicious marinades, with tzatziki, peanut sauce, and a spicy tomato dip served alongside.

It was truly amazing, though I wasn't convinced when he first fired up the grill and had to burn off some of the residue...

Here Ian and Rishad are hard at work with the grilling on the back deck.
And there were lots of people there, many of whom we hadn't seen in months or years. It was sort of surreal, with people we knew from Victoria (Shannon and Robyn) being in Halifax along with a bunch of people we knew from Halifax (too numerous to name) plus all the people we know from New Brunswick. It was sort of like a strange dream where you see people from different places and times, who have never actually met in real life.
Of course there were some games organized, but for some reason only for Julia. First she had to put out a candle with a cork that was dangling from her hips. Quite dangerous in fact, but in the end she was successful. And then she wore the cork all evening, swinging it around while dancing at the bar later.

Then she had to pick me out of a lineup containing several other guys only by touching our bare legs while blind-folded, as seen here. To keep it challenging, we stealthily switched positions on her as she went back and forth. Of course she was successful, despite the similarity of mine and Nick's legs. (She correctly noticed that his were slightly hairier.)

Feeling badly that they hadn't thought of any games for me, they decided to dress me up in Rishad's regular clothes after making me striptease for Julia. A perfect fit.
At this point we were supposed to go for a booze cruise in the harbour but that got rained out, much to the disappointment of party-planning Marie. We didn't let it get us down - we sent some newly-arrived sober guests for a beer run instead. Past this, I'm at a loss for commentary since I don't remember anything but waking up the next day with a bad hangover. I would love to blame it on the tequila...

Okay, so it's Julia now - I'm taking this over as Jeremi has no idea what happened beyond this point. After drinking one or two far too strong Caesars, he thought it would be a good idea to have a few tequila shots with Laffy, Joey, and Susanne (shown above), as well as his brother Nick and Calin. Alas, neither he nor his brother (shown below with his lovely wife Cathy) know when to say no...
But he was having so much fun!
There was a tablecloth with a marker so that people could write us their good wishes - unfortunately Jeremi didn't read this one until it was too late (likely while looking at these pictures days later).

Obviously not heeding this advice, Jeremi ended up in here (in Rishad's bathroom)...

... at around 9:30 pm. Unfortunately he wasn't the only one. His brother was quick to follow suit. Joey was nice enough to tuck him in.

These are a few more pics from later that night where the fun continued at the Lower Deck.

Marie conspired to have the band call me up on stage to sing and dance along with one of the songs, which was great fun.
Here we were trying to cajole the bouncer into letting us dance in front of the stage, as it used to be allowed (Robyn most convincingly of all, I'd say). They'd banned this practice after some drunk woman fell into the band and injured herself, and was currently trying to sue the bar, or something like this. Still, we had fun trying to get them to let us do it...
Me dancing with the band...
All the happy revellers, mostly ladies at this point, which is only fitting for a party that ended up being a bachelorette party after all.
Still, it wasn't all ladies - here's Joey, Jeremi's cousin Crystal's husband.

And Jer's sister Marlene was still going strong, and his cousin Crystal. In fact, the whole New Brunswick crew was still doing great except for Jeremi and his brother, so in the end they did managed to salvage the reputation of the family and the region. (Who knew that so much was at stake?!)

I'm sure Calin is singing me some sort of Dutch drinking song in this one (or so I'd like to believe).


Ian and Rhiannon were able to make use of the luxury hotel room that Marie had arranged for us at the Delta downtown - Jeremi was much too much of a disaster. Afterward we headed home, and ordered some pizzas to Rishad and Anjulee's places, which greatly helped with the recovery the next morning.

And so the next morning wasn't actually all that bad for Calin, Susanne, Marlene, and I. When I woke up around 9:00, I arranged to drive out to pick up the cases of Nova Scotia cider that we'd ordered (in place of champagne), and since the guy lived west of the city anyhow, I thought it would be fun to bring those three along to visit Peggy's Cove. I tried to drag Jeremi's sorry ass out of bed, but he was still suffering quite a bit. And so we headed out, picked up the cider, and took in the misty scene out on the rocks.
With the most photographed of Canadian light houses...
The fresh sea air was certainly restorative for me, and I was having a great time scrambling over the rocks. It was Marlene's first time there too, which was great.
All in all, a nice little detour, and it gave Jeremi some much-needed recovery time.
When we made it back to Halifax, we found out that Joey and Crystal had already left (with a mostly empty van), leaving us to drive back both Marlene and Jeremi (who had neglected to send back anything with them, or to take a ride with them to free up some space in our car). We had a lot of stuff with us, all of our luggage and camping equipment, Calin and Susanne's rather sizable luggage, a few cases of cider, and now five people to drive. I was pretty pissed off at Jeremi, but he was in such a pathetic state, that I had to eventually forgive him. Probably around when we had to pull over around the toll booths on highway 2 for him to throw up - again. Well, I married him anyways, so it couldn't have been that bad...

And finally, by popular request (okay, really just Jeremi's insistence), here's the video that Susanne took of me dancing with the band. It's sideways, and we're too lazy to figure out how to fix that, so if you really want to watch me dancing, you'll have to tilt your head. Enjoy!