Today would be a work day. This was the day that we would prepare everything for the wedding. The bride’s mom, Monique, had some rather grand ideas. The French contingent and the Ohio contingent had arrived overnight so now we had 30+ people when we gathered at the lake house. Courtney would stay at the house to set up that place, while Barbara and I went with Monique, three French people, and four Ohio people to do food prep in the kitchen of St. Luke’s Church in Penn Yan. The kitchen could comfortably fit four and six with less comfort. Three sisters from Ohio started making pie crusts and Barbara made a broccoli salad while the rest of us went to BJ’s (a big box store) in Geneva. Of the group, I was the only one who had ever been in a big box store before. They were a little overwhelmed. I helped them navigate and I wound up finding most of the items on the list as well. We couldn’t find all of the items though, and others were simply too big, so we went back to the kitchen and a few of us joined the kitchen crew while Monique and Patrick (French) went to Tops down the road for those last few items. I will tell you that our shoppers were not that efficient, so we were really behind on the food prep. Monique and Patrick were gone for a very, very long time. Our pies had been prepped for at least two hours before they came back, and they were still missing some items, like Cinnamon, which we needed for most of the pies. While we chopped vegetables, Monique and Patrick went back to get cinnamon and tapioca. We still couldn’t make the pies when they got back because now it was time to clean up and go to the reception dinner. We would have been even further behind, but the rehearsal itself was cancelled due to rain. All of us went to our apartments to change to nice clothes, and then we went to the Esperanza for dinner. The location was wonderful, but to me, the food wasn’t very good. Others though were impressed. To each his own I guess. For dessert, we went to the house. We had cookies, coffee and wine. At dusk, those of us on food prep went back to the church… in our good clothes, to complete our work. I made the pies, and then chopped a whole bunch of onions & peppers for shish-kabobs. We never did get to the salad Nichoise. We cleaned up the kitchen, moved all the food to the vans and got out of there by midnight. Barbara and I cooked two pies in our apartment until 1:30AM. The Ohio girls worked on their food items until 4:30AM. Monique and Patrick never went to sleep. They spent all night skewering and marinating shish-kabobs, about 500 of them.