Updated 5/20/06 with the entire text of "Ask the Bride & Groom"!

From the Good ship "Six-of-One" .......... Inside the always rowdy galley............... high atop the 'flag of flags' ..........	....floats the benevolent and magnificent Flying Spaghetti Monster. All hail Willow's Inspired masterpiece, and rejoice in his noodly goodness!

Update 5/18/06: The Best of, featuring Richard's Pics, Mykey's pics, and many, many others, including the disposables!.

And then all hell breaks loose, courtesy of Paisley Bielawska, the worst cook on the seven seas. Willow was the deserving winner of our MVP (most valuable Pirate) award.	Dispatched by the Admiral. (This pic is from the rehearsal dinner the night before. Look how blase we all are in the background: My moms chillin', Mykey's reading, I'm drinking lemonade, and Rox is checking the script. Ho-hum. Just another day on the "Six-of-One".)

But before that moment, there were months of sword practice. In January...	In February....

By March the choreography was down, and it was all about the taunting and the attitude.	Especially important if your character is totally nuts....

And all for a single minute of gratuitous violence.

Zoe and Dahniella, our semi-pro ringbearers, rehearsing...	And working the crowd, immediately before the attempted to pass off two 'ring pops' as the wedding rings.

And then, the main event: Tymn and Angel in hot boy on boy action!	But not before a full schedule of practices, including this one in the rain, with Tymn doing unspeakable things to Walker the rubber chicken.

And although costuming is important - especially when your wench is an expert seamstress...	It really all comes down to attitude. Excellent job gentlemen.

After that it was all about jumping the besom.	And lots of kissing.

But then, oops, one more disgruntled crew member goin' Postal on us. C-Marc as Marc of the Sea (Co-starring Wilson the volleyball in the background.)	And although we never actually get around to the fighting part, it was still fun doin' all the attitude and taunting bits.

A month later, what stands out? All of the selfless hard work behind the scenes. Angel, Cindy, Makai and Nancy - with the cheesecakes! - all assisting Head Galley Wench Laura.	The crossing of the streams: friends from various parts of our lives interacting for the first time.

For all of the toil, there was always plenty of fun, as well. Jen and Karen never seemed to get tired of watching the cute boys swordfight. Swordmaster Mykey though, seems a bit more dubious about their "technique".	And we are eternally grateful to our Moms: generous to a fault, and smashing good sports about our little nuptial freakshow.

Five Months of hard seas, but we survived in good shape.	Thanks to you, our awesome friends.

Thank YOU! Salmagundi, Admiral Karen, Captain General Angus, and all of the crew of the late, great ship the "Six-of-One". May there ever be wind in your sails, toast in the toaster, and good shipmates on hand to share stories of long ago....

.......Hey you! Got some extra time? Due to audience demand (okay, just two of you, but we aim to please), we are hereby re-posting all three editions of "Ask the Bride & Groom!"

Go get a drink and a snack: This takes a while. Enjoy!

Q: Why didn't you do this sooner?

A: Yeahyeahyeah. Jenya handed us the idea 32 months ago, during the Solaris camping trip of 2003. It then took us two and a half years to execute. Why so long? Well, as awesome as the final product was, it was not out first priority. It wasn't even our second! :-)

First off, we had to get better jobs. Not better paying, mind you, just better. Planning a wedding takes all of your mental and emotional resources, and we needed to shore up those foundations first. Karen was working at Borland and making good money as well as an ulcer. I was working at Borders and having a blast and making chump change. So she moved downtown to the courthouse and I moved out to Aptos to Cabrillo. One down. The other thing we needed to do was move. The wedding is a one shot deal, but a good house in this town is good for years of serenity. So 9 months ago we moved from Live Oak to downtown Santa Cruz. With all that out of the way, we were ready to begin. But yeah, it took awhile to get the rest of our lives squared away first.

Q: How did you two meet?

A: Officially or unofficially? :-) We first met at Jen & Matt's wedding. Oh, the irony! But we were both sick that day and I got into a fight with Karen's housemate. The things that happen at receptions! Dale and Brian gave me a ride home, but wanted to take me "the other way" up to their cabin. I demurred.

A couple of months later Matt & Jen hosted a bardic at their house. (A bardic is sorta like livingroom show & tell crossed with a vaudeville show. Everyone who is invited performs something: Read a story, tell some jokes, sing a song, do a dance, hand out muffins, etc. Whatever you want, basically.) Anyhoo, carless as always I took the bus up to Ben Lomond. I was in their kitchen when Karen walked in. Wowza. Amazingly we had been in the same group of friends for years and had never crossed paths before. Anyhoo, we got down to the bardic. Karen had forgotten the book that she was going to read from, so she just freestyled the story from memory. I was very impressed by this. I read one of my columns, during which Colleen took a drink at the wrong moment, started laughing, and squirted liquid out of her nose. Yes, an authentic 'noser'. Karen was impressed by this. Love at first sight? Not quite. Colleen - after cleaning up the rug (and herself) - gave me a ride home. After the next months bardic though Karen gave me a ride home, and the rest, shall we say, is history.

So, yes, unintentional but not surprising that we met at a lovely handfasting and then at a crazy show-and-tell party. Combine the two and you have the Pirate wedding, pretty much.

Q: Why the "Six-of-One"?

A: Aaah....good question. The plain truth is that in true pirate fashion - I stole it. I lifted our mythical ship from the website of the Bilge Pumps (one of my favorite pirate bands). Their three mythical ships are the Iron Maiden, the Six-of-One and the Festering Boil. Since our back story was that we were combining our ships into one fleet, I liked the idea of the 'Six-of-One' for one of us, and the 'Half-Dozen' for the other. Plus it looks neat in quotes, with the little "of" in between the capital letters. There are lots of other zippier names for ships out there, but I grew to like our little place holder of a name.

Q: Where did you get the idea for the wedding?

A: Which idea? There were LOTS and LOTS of 'em. The impetus for the whole shebang came from Jenya, but the genesis of it came from Tymn. He had the idea of marrying Makai on a beach and then rowing the two of them out to a boat. Makai vetoed that (and I really don't blame her, really). Tymn then mentioned it to Jenya, who kept it under her hat until our yearly camping trip in June, 2003. There, on the last night of the trip, appropo of nothing and completely out of left field she says to the two of us: "I think you two should get handfasted and that it should be a pirate theme." We stared at each other for a moment, shrugged, and then said - almost simultaneously - "Okay - but your officiating!" We quickly flagged down Mykey and signed him on as well. On the way home from the camping trip we laughed about the possibilities of a pirate ceremony. Having been handed the idea, and totally relaxed from a long weekend of naked camping, we let our imaginations run wild. By the time we got home the basic trifecta of Ritual, Wedding, and Benny Hill Sketch was in place. And swordfighting. Lotsa swordfighting.

Q: Where did you find that gnarly invitation?

A: Right out of thin air. I looked through the whole gigantic binder at Tymn's Quikprint shop, and there wasn't one like what we wanted. Karen had the original concept of a big blot of incomprehensible pirate speak on the front, with the translation on the inside. A great idea! I wrote both sides and went to Tymn's shop. He had the cool scroll outline (Which Makai drew, I think), and the clip art of the treasure chest. We put a jolly roger background on one side, and then I had the idea of creating a double-skull and cross bones. Five minutes of expert tapping from Tymny, and voila! we had the invite. No bells, whistles, ribbons or glossy photos. Like everything else we did it was cheap, devious and full of fun.

Then came the RSVP card (Or, as Tymn christened it, the ARRrrrSVP card.) I had the idea of a series of check-off boxes. I wanted to make it clear that formal dress was not required, so we came up with the trio of yes, I'll be there in costume, yes, I'll be there in jeans, and no, we can't make it. Given the free-wheeling nature of the ceremony that was already taking shape, I wanted to slip one more joke in. I said to Tymn, "One more - something surreal." He shrugged and typed in "We never really liked you." After we stopped laughing like naughty school boys we decided to leave it there, make a proof and show it to Admiral Earthsign, who, we were sure, would shoot it right down.

But my bride is ever surprising. She laughed, considered it, and declared: "What the hell." and so we had Tymn print up a gazillion wedding invites full of bad jokes and pirate gobbledy-gook - although 'covertureous' is really a word!

Q: Articulated Helmet? What?

A: "Reticulated", Actually. Ah, I wondered if that would slip by. That is one of the many instances of something in the script that was just a place holder becoming a real piece of dialogue. My role in the script was basically Editor-in-Chief. I stitched the holes together and the participants filled in the holes. So I wrote the run-up to Tymn and Angel's swordfight (the whole reading from the scroll routine and such) and left a hole for them to create their own in-fight taunts. In the script I needed to put in something for them to riff off of during swordfight practice, until they came up with their own bits. The five things I wrote for them were:

It's 1986, and I am on the Great Peace March. Me and 500 other hippies are out in the middle of beaucoup nowhere. No towns, no TV, no newspapers, no nothing. But we all had stamps! And the booklet of choice in the Spring of '86 was seashells. Isolated as we were, we began to use the weird-ass names on our stamps as our swear words. Great fun, in a you-had-to-be-there sort of way. But I guess all that stayed with me, because when it came time to put in some place holder taunts, there they were: all the wacky shell names from the Peace March.

In the actual ceremony the boys adroitly improvised most of their lines during their swordfight, and Reticulated Helmet stilled popped up. But Angel, with tons of attitude and that silly Castillian accent, pulled it off nicely.

Q: Was that a real, legal wedding?

A: Yessir. It didn't start out that way though. We are amazingly non-traditional, as our little nuptial travesty would indicate. We hadn't really considered getting legally hitched until Karen did some research and found that a couple can save a buttload of money by combining insurances and getting some cheaper rates on things. So fairly late in the game we opted to go for the legal angle as well. Luckily the bride works in the county courthouse, so that part went smooth. After that it was just a matter of a few script tweaks. That is why the Bride and Groom are suddenly called upon to sign the Articles. We were supposed to be signing the marriage license then. And at the end we tossed in Mykey and Jenya reeling off the litany of "By the power invested in me by the State, County, Rural District and with the Grace of God and a long handled spoon" hoo-ha to show that this was a LEGAL mating of maties.

Q: 1/3 of the average cost?! How did you pull this off so cheaply?

We got those numbers from costofwedding.com which will give you the average cost of a wedding for any county for the current year. Beware: It's a horrifying checklist. Once you have those figures compare what we did with what the average wedding does. The two areas where we saved the most were the rings ($2,500 versus $24.95) and flowers ($2,000 versus $0. - be honest: did you miss the Kentucky Derby Winner bouquets?) Other savings were in having the wedding and reception in the same place, shopping around to find the right place at a great price, not paying the officiants, and no limos. We borrowed most of the decor and props (Yes, we have deeply disturned friends). Also we used our friend Richard instead of a "real" photographer, Our friend Laura instead of a catered dinner, our friend Yarry instead of a "real" DJ, Our superhero friend Rox instead of a real wedding planner, and we saved an easy grand with our no-frills invitations. About the only area where we spent the average was in the outfits for the Bride and Groom. :-) (Hey, dressing like an 18th Century couch does not come cheap!) But unlike most gowns and tuxes, we will actually USE these clothes again. Moral: Screw convention, have a cooler wedding and save a bucket of cash in the process.

Q: Was that a song you were quoting in your vows?

A: Yepper, two of them: "We are each other" by the Beautiful South. One of Karen's faves, even though the rest of the lyrics get really dark really fast....the other, was, of course, "Nothing else matters" by Metallica, just for fun. The former she would know, the latter all y'all would know, and they fit together nicely.

Q: A walk through the ocean of most souls....?

A: .....Would scarce get your feet wet. From the song "Deteriorata" by the National Lampoon. On most Dr. Demento compilations. Hey, Truth is where you find it.

Q: Had you heard each others vows beforehand?

A: Nope. By design. This was the 'for reals' part of the ceremony, so we wanted maximum emotion from each other. And our guests too, of course. :-) This idea of not giving the goods away led to some hilarious improvisations during the months of rehearsals where we had to fill in this space, and no, I cannot quote any of those 'vows' here.

Q: Name Change?

A: Naaah. We didn't do it on the Marriage License so we didn't do it in the ceremony. No surnames were mentioned in the script at all. We were declared simply Husband and Wife, and at the end presented as Captain General and Admiral. Keep it simple. The only name change that may result from this wedding is Willow. I believe she has grown rather fond of the name Paisley Bielawska.

Q: What's the "Brotherhood of the Coast"?

A: That came out of my research into the Pirates of the Spanish Main. Other folks called them Buccaneers, Privateers or Pirates, but the rogues themselves referred to one another as the Brotherhood of the Coast. Pirates, for all of their oceanic reputations, rarely engaged in long voyages. Usually they spent all of their brief careers near ports or hugging the coast. More cost-effective that way.

Q: What's a "Captain General"?

A: Same thing as an Admiral. A bit older in entomology, but both command several ships, each with an individual captain. I picked up the term from the book "Over the Edge of the World" by Lawrence Bergreen. Ferdinand Magellan was a Captain General in the early 1500's. A hundred years later - during the "Golden Age" of Piracy - both terms were used. By the time of the American Revolution the term Admiral was used almost exclusively. Plus "Admiral Angus" sounds like Captain Feathersword's boss, and having two different designations saved some confusion. Also I liked signing all those thousands of emails with the little "Cap'n Gen'l" abbreviation.

Q: I don't ever recall you wearing an earring before....

A: Nope. Got my face stapled for a cheap prop gag. Just after Christmas I stood in line at the mall with about six 9-year old girls and had to explain repeatedly that no, I was not somebody's father.

Q: I caught the Prince lyric and the last guy playing Castaway. How many other references did you pack into that?

A: Yikes. I don't believe we ever counted. Where's a copy of the script. Let's see......hmmm most of them come at the end. We probably ad-libbed a few more, but officially:

So, given all that, I had to do something spectacular in 2006! Which of course begs the question: What's up for 2016...?! I have no idea. But given the above list, I suspect it'll involve something creative and off-the-grid. Stay tuned!

And, as always, thanks for reading. Salmagundi, Captain General Angus