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Pleasant Hills Community Presbyterian Church It was a Sunday in March, 1998, at Carnegie Science Center, and two employees had just finished their day. The two had met before when Patrick had to turn off the lights for Ports of Discovery one Saturday evening, and the switches were in the Creative Technology Center (CTC). When Patrick arrived in security to sign out, Becky and Vince were talking about their web sites, and Patrick was able to get into the act. Becky and Patrick exchanged web addresses, and then he mentioned he had to be going, he needed to get something to eat before doing some work in a computer lab at the University of Pittsburgh. Becky asked if she could join him. They went to the Eat-N-Park in Squirrel Hill and talked for over three hours, and the rest is history. Becky and Patrick started to see each other, he started to stay over at Becky's apartment and never went back to his mom's house. The night of December 31, 1998 would prove to be a critical time in their lives. They went to the First Night celebrations in downtown Pittsburgh. After the fireworks were over and they were heading back to the car, Patrick brought up the subject of New Year's Resolutions. Patrick said his resolution was to get engaged, and he proposed to Becky on the spot! She accepted right then and there. Then what usually takes a year and a half was to be done in 7 months: planning and implementing a wedding and honeymoon. They had to scramble. The choice of church was easy: the one Becky grew up in! It is traditional for the wedding to be in the bride's church anyway, plus Patrick is not religious so he has no church! The reception site took a bit of research. One of the things Becky specified was NO DROP CEILINGS!!!!! We wound up calling the South Park offices. The wedding date was originally set for August 14, then moved to August 7 when no time was available at the church on the 14th. The South Park offices were called in January, and they only had one site left! If you get married make sure you book the reception early or you might not get what you want! We did get what we wanted for the theme we decided on, a picnicy theme, but other people might not be so lucky! It was decided that Becky's good friend Maggie would help MAKE the wedding dress. No buying a dress! Reasons were 1) Becky did not want to wear white anyway, and 2) Becky had French silk she bought in London at Liberty's which she thought would be great in her wedding dress. The previous August, Patrick and Becky took Becky's car (known as Marvin) to the home of Patrick's friend and coworker Don Leech to get waxed up. Don is a retired elementary school music teacher who got hired on part-time in the Miniature Railroad and Village at Carnegie Science Center after 6 weeks of volunteering. Now Don has a few antique cars, including a 1935 Chevrolet Standard in original condition. When Don went to pick his wife Carol up at the trolley stop, Becky commented that the 1935 Chevrolet would make a good wedding car. So the following January when Patrick saw Don for the first time after getting engaged he asked him two things: if he would be his best man, and if they could use his 1935 Chevrolet as the wedding car. Don said yes to both. The role of Best Woman (Maid of Honor to those of you who are more conservative) had been decided years before: Becky's sister Sherry. They are very close even with a 7 and a half year age difference. Something here to show what a small world we live in: Sherry was one of Don's students! Last but certainly not least were the flower girls. Sherry's best friend for many years has been Poppy Ducary. Poppy and her husband Jamie have three children, two girls and a boy. We asked if the two girls, Marissa and Millie, would be our flower girls, and they said yes! That gave us an almost all redhead wedding. Only Marissa does not have red hair. Now all of the detail planning could begin: invitations, a caterer, a cake, Patrick's suit, flowers, the marriage license, the guest list, meeting with the minister, decorations, making sure out-of-town guests had a place to stay, planning the honeymoon, and too many other hings to list here. The couple borrowed a cd burner so they could burn cd's with the music they wanted, this way they did not need to hire a dj or band. One of Patrick's big things when it came to registering was he wanted to do it at Kaufmann's in downtown Pittsburgh, the only big downtown department store left from the golden age of the city, before everybody moved to the suburbs. This was a lot of fun for all we had to do was go around with a salesperson with a scanner and say what we wanted and the salesperson scanned it in! And oh did we make a list! It was fun stopping by every once in a while to get a copy of the registry and see what people had bought us! Friday, August 6th, a day of running around like crazy in preparation for the next day. Becky was going nuts with flowers, Sherry was racing to put photos into frames, Patrick was running around Pittsburgh getting last minute things, and everybody at the Maclean household was doing something to for the next day. Rehearsal was at 4:30, and the dinner was at 7 at The Church Brew Works on Liberty Avenue in the Bloomfield area of the city. Saturday, August 7, 1999, finally arrived. First, we went to the reception hall to decorate around 8AM, staying until about 10:30, fortunately we have very good friends who stayed there until the decorating was done. Sherry and Becky went to get their hair done with a quick stop at the McDonald's Drive-Thru for fries and drinks, then back to the Maclean household. They arrive to find Don and Patrick trying to start Don's car. Vapor lock got to the fuel pump which was cooled off with a gallon of water, but trying to start the car drained the battery, which got a jump from Dave Kaufman, a Maclean relative. And so they were off to the church! 1:30 came and went, Becky had a few wedding dress problems, but they were solved and by 1:45 the wedding was on. The wedding went very well, with a great reception afterwards. The food was delicious, people drooled over Don's 35 Chevy and 95 Impala SS, and everyone seemed to have had a wonderful time. Supposedly weddings are cursed with problems, but this one went off with only a couple small ones, even the weather cooperated. This day was nuts, helluva lot of fun, and Becky & Patrick would happily do it over again. Web page created: September, 1999. Modified: August 26, 2001 |
