Marriage, Kidney Stones, and Travel

Ahh~ what an eventful 2 months. My end of year bonanza of events and mishaps. Here’s a quick table to summarize what has transpired at the latter part of 2025:

My fiance, now wife, and I have been preparing for our wedding for a year. However, October was the time when things started to ramp up. We have a month and a few days to get things somewhat finalized before the big event the month after. There’s the wedding venue and reception area check, pastor talk, DJ and string trio meetup, reception food and drink approvals, and more things I probably missed. Now all of these would have been kind of easy if it were in our home state, but that is not the case. It was in LA. So somethings we can do remotely but some had to be in person like the wedding cake testing. We tried to cram them all together; it didn’t work. We still needed to go back and forth.

November, things started to ramp up even more. Only a few days before the D-day. We did more ballroom dancing practice that we started a 2-3 months prior. We were feeling confident with all the fancy twirly dance steps thanks to our awesome intrsuctor. It was definitely a learning curve. Starting off felt the usual noob journey. Like Jake from Adventure Time said, “Dude, suckin’ at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.” Then we had even more pre-weddings things so we had to be back and forth LA again. Further, my family ended up flying to LA to be at my wedding. That didn’t quite go as planned, but we did end up enjoying the touristy things in California. We bonded over the silly things and scary stuff like people drowing when we went to the Santa Monica pier. Finally we have the wedding rehearsal where I learned that there are more hidden costs to be had. Who knew we needed to get everyone lunch/dinner after the rehearsal; I sure didn’t. So yeah, the costs were up there and this doesn’t even include the travel to Japan for December.

The wedding itself was quite nice. All the preparations came together with some unexpected things. One of my groomsman couldn’t make it due to a stroke. Relatives on my side couldn’t make it. Then I had an oopsy moment during the vows but who cares? I do. It was actually quite embarrassing. Whatever! Anyways, it was fun. We brought our pug with us with his custom tuxedo. He yipped the whole ceremony. The pastor was funny and great at adlibbing. The string trio was on point with my Final Fantasy 8 - Julia song – which made someone cry by the way. The DJ was also very flexible and knew what he was doing despite planning things on the fly. Seeing old friends and my whole family for this precious event really made my heart feel full. Things weren’t perfect and that’s okay.

December is honeymoon and holiday festivities. We went to Japan where we explored as much as we can of Osaka and the neighbouring places. We experienced the Dotonbori drinking tour experience, shopping at DenDen town, tasting Kobe beef, feeding super-aggressive deers, and relaxing at Ryokan (onsen place). I had a little break from my vacation by going back to work for a week. Then back to my fam-bam to enjoy the end of year holiday activities. Oh and I almost forgot about my kidney stone; it was painful as f*ck. Had to go to urgent care because I was peeing blood so that was fun. Of course, this happened the day before we fly to Japan. Also, my dog also had to go to urgent care because of aspiration penumonia and non-stop puking. Another fun and expensive event. So overall, it was a great year ender. Thanks 2025 (seriously, no sarcasm here)!

~HyperChiicken out