This past weekend I and a bunch of other people headed down to the southern region of California (also known as [cough] [hack] Los Angeles) for a friend's wedding. Exiting the plane in LAX, I noticed that I began coughing as soon as we hit the outside air. I've never flown into LA before, so hitting the smog layer was... quite disturbing... I mean, San Jose isn't exactly doing the best job of maintaining air quality, but I certainly don't begin coughing when I walk outside here.

Of the to-be-married couple, I knew Reni from our years at Canaan's youth group (her dad used to pastor at Canaan). The couple (Maurice is the husband, good guy... good ballplayer) had one of the quicker courtships that I've heard... apparently they met last August at Maurice's church, began seeing each other after serving with one another on a missions trip to Mexico, then he proposed on Christmas. Four months! That probably has to take the cake as far as courtships of people I know personally. It's quite evident though when looking at them that they were meant for each other, so why wait?

Boy, there's a lot of planning that goes into a wedding. Since a bunch of us Canaan folks made it down to LA on the Thursday before the Saturday wedding, we helped out with some of the logistical aspects... seating chart... wedding favors... 'twas actually kind of stressful for at least a few of the folks. I had the honor of leading a few worship songs during the ceremony, which was not as nerve-wracking as I feared it'd be. It was kind of funny when JT lost his grip on one of his drumsticks to the intro of "Majesty"... I had to stifle a smirk turning around to sing... he picked it up and continued without a missing a beat. Oh, in the "what're the odds of that happening?" column, Reni asked some friends of hers to help out on the team, and one of them (bassist) turned out to be Francis, an old high school classmate of mine. Walking into the rehearsal I thought that the guy looked familiar but couldn't quite place it, then he came up to me and remembered my name. I'm usually not too bad with names, so I was pretty embarrassed... it's never a good scene when someone else knows your name but you don't remember theirs.

For the first time in my life, at the reception, I was seated at the singles table. I hope that this doesn't become a trend. I'm only 24! It's kind of weird sitting down at your table, looking around at the people sitting there, not recognizing most of the faces, and knowing that each person was specifically chosen to sit at that table by the bride and/or groom... maybe for other people they look forward to that environment, but it felt rather awkward and forced to me. Maybe I'm just overly conservative. Anyhow, I spent the evening setting up JT with opportunities to tell stories.

Afterwards, Reni and Maurice went off, and the rest of us hung out... played some ball... on Sunday went to Drew Hyun's church in LA... pretty cool to see a predominantly Korean church all decked out in red getting ready for the World Cup match... they made a good run this year. Even if I was kind of annoyed at that guy's "goal celebration" by mimicking speedskating.