wedding overload

I was counting the other day and realized that I'm scheduled to attend nine weddings so far this year:
- Charity & Mark: February 17th, in Stanford/San Francisco, CA
- Jane & Bert: April 8th, in Beverly Hills/Pasadena, CA
- Justin & Jennifer: April 14th, in Dallas, TX
- Ann & Duong: April 21th, in San Ramon, CA
- William & Kimara: May 12th, in Lanesboro, MN
- Ingrid & Christopher: May 27th, in Verona, WI
- Kathie & Steve: June 2nd, most likely in Palo Alto, CA
- Angela & Perkin: June 9th, in Menlo Park/Redwood City, CA
- Wen & Mehmet: June 24th, in Los Gatos, CA

Last year, I attended six weddings:
- Spencer & Stephanie: May 28th, in Novato, CA
- Stephanie & Edwin: June 17th, in Seattle, WA
- Steve & Jocelyn: August 12th, in Sonoma, CA
- Debbie & Hsien: October 7th, in Long Beach, CA
- Sherry & Brian: November 11th, in Woodside/Milpitas, CA
- Spencer & Erica: December 30th, in Honolulu, HI

I was unable to attend a seventh wedding because it was also on May 28th (Emily & Bob, in Monterey, CA), and an eighth (July 2th in Boston, MA) was cancelled. I chose not to attend a ninth (Linda & Leon, October 14th in Richardson, TX) because it was one week after Long Beach.

That's (at least) fifteen weddings in two years. I was curious as to whether I'd been to that many before 2006 in my entire life, so I started cataloguing them:
- Tina & Minh: October 29th, 2005, in Milpitas/Campbell, CA
- Lisa & Matt: October 8th 2005, in Sugarland, TX
- George & Diana: May 7th 2005, in San Jose, CA
- Alwin & Connie: July 24th 2004, in Sunnyvale/Cupertino, CA
- Elaine & Alex: May 8th 2004, in Laguna Beach, CA
- Sergio & Nicole: August 9th 2003, in Boston, MA
- Katelyn & Laurent: June 14th 2003, in Redwood City, CA
- Alice & James: October 12th 2002, in Shanghai, China
- Cindy & Andrew: September 7th 2002, in Boston, MA
- Ken & Bo: May 31th 2002, in Tiffin, OH
- David & Elsa: May 11th 2002, in New York, NY
- Mabi & Michael: February 2002, in Burlingame, CA
- four of my parents' siblings' weddings (1983, 1984, 1993, January 2002)

Turns out there were sixteen pre-2006 weddings, and there have been fifteen post-2005 weddings so far. Does that make 2005/2006 some kind of inflexion point?

In general, I'm happy to celebrate weddings with my friends and family, but my wallet has been complaining a bit lately, especially for the out-of-town ones. Well, it's hard to complain about an excuse to go to Hawaii, but Minnesota? Wisconsin?? On the bright side, given a finite number of friends and relatives, there should be a finite number of weddings to attend, I should hope.

I am looking forward to this weekend's wedding; the ceremony is at the Stanford Memorial Church, and I haven't been there since I was a flower girl in my uncle's wedding (1984, see above). I don't remember it, but I have the pictures, and they're beautiful. Plus, the reception is at the Asian Art Museum, which I do remember from school field trips, and that should be gorgeous as well.

Update: I've been told that the Asian Art Museum has moved. I guess I should have realized that after visiting the new De Young last month. Oh well, it'll be fun to check out the new location, anyway.