Every year I wonder if Halloween — funny, party-focused, completely secularized — is indeed my favorite holiday. I think it just might be: I mean, if you put any amount of effort into the day at all, your worst-case scenario will be staying in and giving out candy to little kids in costume.

This year I spent my Halloween in Appleton for Jonas and Sarah's wedding. Here's most of the Lawrentian delegation outside the church after the wedding on Saturday:



So let me tell you a tale. On Friday (that would be Halloween for those of you following along at home) I left work early, drove to Appleton, met up with Ben and Nora at ORC (where I also either met or re-met Ging... all these young kids at my college nowadays...), hung out for a while, and then went with my favorite Floridians to the rehearsal dinner after-party at the hotel.

I'd seen a lot of the Lawrentians who were there earlier this summer at Bill's purportedly semi-annual cottage get-together, but I haven't seen any of them often enough to stop each meeting from feeling like a mini-reunion.

And there were other people at the hotel whom I hadn't seen in years: Jonas' friend Jeremy certainly, and Bill's Beth, who insisted that we hadn't seen each other since her wedding.

(That seems impossible. Are all my recent memories of her really from the defunct Bill & Beth in Boston blog?)

The Politician was both my ride and the guy whose couch I'd supposedly be sleeping on, so I ended up joining Bill and Beth and Bill's family at the bars for Bill's sister's 21st birthday. We left the reliably-sketchy Firefly at 1 and even though this was the Night of Complete Lies (e.g. Meghan was singing an aria at the wedding, Jubb was Matthew's secret guest), Bill was as good as his word.

The wedding itself was pretty casual, especially for someone more used to the pomp and circumstance of Catholicism. There was no kneeling and just one hymn, which we rocked pretty hard. Jonas said that the ceremony clocked in at about 18 minutes all told.

Given that, I think it's fair to say that the reception afterwards — rather than the wedding itself — was the highlight for me, not least because it was a costume reception. As in, Halloween costumes.

A bunch of us had rented out of the fancy alumni house for the night for $13/person, so after taking some pictures we walked back to change.

I'd kept my costume a secret because that's part of the fun, and I have to say that I was proud of what I accomplished and pleased with the reactions I got from all the Losties at Lawrence. The only good snapshot of me in costume so far is irredeemably rakish, but here are some pictures I took yesterday night:







Maybe from now on I won't be terrible at Halloween? We'll see.

Lawrentians are inveterate theme partiers, so the other costumes were pretty great. Here're the bride and groom at the reception:



And here's Luigi and Mark Antony with the two Dorothys. I guessed "Evil Dorothy" and "Good Dorothy" and got yelled at — did you know that The Wizard of Oz was shot in both black-and-white (Kansas) and Technicolor (Oz)?



Not pictured: Matthew as Captain Mal, Meghan as Smurfette, Nora as Cleopatra, Annie as Sarah Palin, Prichard in a wedding dress, and Bill and Beth as Jareth the Goblin King and Sarah Williams from Labryinth. My selection of good pictures is still pretty limited right now, but you can see all of these costumes on Facebook.

Jeremy's pirate outfit was pretty good, but my favorite costume not worn by a Lawrentian was probably the Tony Stark outfit one of the groomsmen made by sticking a glowing circular light beneath his tux and wearing sunglasses. Easy and clever.

Highlights that evening included a choreographed performance of Thriller and the Politician's fantastical Magic Dance. Jonas and Sarah had selected all the music, so the unofficial Lawrence school songs — "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" and "Africa" — were both played at one point.

There was also an ongoing drinking contest between Ben, Meghan, and Our Bold Hero — I can't remember who won, so let's just say that we're all winners. Or that I probably won.

The party wound down back at the house with a game of King's Cup — which Miss Manners would tell you is a pre-party game — and the weekend wound down the next day at Perkins, where everything looked unappetizing and I decided that a vanilla malt was the only food worth consuming.

A decision I've made a few times before, actually.

We said our goodbyes and I drove home. I'll see Ben in December and many of these people next January, which doesn't actually seem that far off.