E.B and Jean's wedding

I took a few days off from poker to attend the wedding of our good friends E.B. and Jean. The wedding took place at a beautiful mansion in the Napa valley. We drove up on Friday afternoon and Jen and I were two of the lucky dozen or so people who got to stay at the site for the weekend. At the rehearsal dinner on Friday night, about 50 people enjoyed food provided by Top Dog catering (which is owned by the groom) and while most of them were gone by 9:30 a few of us partied until after midnight.

The following morning, 12 of us, including the bride and groom descended on Gilwood's cafe in St. Helena for some coffee, eggs, an obscene amount of bacon, and other delicious breakfast goodies. I had to be ready for action at 3:00 for pictures, because I was the one performing the ceremony! That's right, I was ordained reverend Dave, by the Universal Life Church to make it legal for me to perform weddings (as well as a few other ceremonies). When 5 o'clock rolled around I was surprisingly not nervous. E.B. had written the bulk of the ceremony and I plugged in a few of my own words here and there.

From start to finish the Ceremony took less than 15 minutes and couldn't have gone better. The only hitch came when E.B. and Jean read their vows which they had written themselves. A professional vow writer couldn't have done a better job and their vows were so beautiful and heartfelt that I found myself getting misty eyed. I think it's ok for anyone to cry at a wedding, but I've never heard of the officiant getting caught up in the moment. I managed to make it through without actually crying and more importantly I got all of the words out in a smooth clear manner.

The reception involved lot's of booze, a live band, dancing, and general merriment. Also the four Sandberg men (E.B., his brothers Paul and David and his dad, Sid) gave 4 of the most eloquent and interesting toasts that I've ever heard. The entire weekend was a Joy...except for the hangover that I had this morning. After another trip to Gilwood's on the way out of town I felt much better. Here are a few pictures.



Here I am performing the ceremony. In my opinion I've never looked smaller. If we could just rid of those silly people standing in front of me this would be a great picture.



Hey! Look at this! It's the greatest thing in the world! A black folder! I bet you've never seen one of these before. Yeah I got a real sweet deal on this baby. Bought it off the back of a truck down at the docks. I could let it go for maybe $150. Who knows maybe it's filled with somethin' worth somethin'. I heard about one guy who bought one of these that was filled with 500 pounds of gold. He just thought it was a folder and then when he go home he opened it and gold came pouring out. Now he's set for life. I haven't looked in this one yet. Could be all kinds of stuff in here. Are you interested? Maybe I could go as low as $125, because you seem like such a nice person. The girl? Yeah what the hell, give me the $125 and I'll throw her in for free.


If you guessed "preparing to smash a huge bug" or "trying to roll a hard 8" you guessed wrong. I'm actually threatening the earth. Not really. This was me on the dance floor doing one of my many signature moves that involves little more than thrusting and flailing with an occasional spin.

Tomorrow it's back to work and I've got a lot left to do. I'm still 600 tournaments short of my goal of 1000 for August. I think I can make it, but my ass is going to be glued to my chair for the rest of the month. On another note you can catch the first hour of coverage of the WSOP Main Event on ESPN this Tuesday at 8 p.m. eastern time. If your lucky maybe you'll catch a 5 millisecond glimpse of the back of my head.