The Announcement

This is the official wedding announcement, drawn by Aaron's good friend, the outstanding comic artist Dave Mitchell. Notice the presence of our friends and heroes including Rat Pfink & Boo Boo, Howard the Duck, Arch Hall, Jr., Captain James T. Kirk, Godzilla, and more! Although Dave was not able to make the trek to Memphis, he guessed at the details perfectly!

The Heartbreak Hotel

Upon arriving in Memphis on Sunday, we all checked into the Elvis Presley Heartbreak Hotel - right across the street from Graceland, and complete with photos of Elvis in every room, a 24-hour Elvis radio station, and a 24-hour Elvis movie channel on the tube (we couldn't tell them apart - we could only tell if it was one of the movies where he was a pilot or one where he was a race car driver).

The hotel also had a heart-shaped swimming pool... heartbroken, of course!

Did I forget to mention it's down at the end of Lonely Street? Well, it is.

Marlowe's

Our first night in town, we took the complimentary free pink limousine down the street to a restaurant called Marlowe's, where Aaron fulfilled his dream of combining barbecue and nachos. Later in the trip, we combined barbecue and spaghetti, but I'll get to that later.

Aaron & Dennie Carter with the Pink Limo from Marlowe's.

Me & Aaron riding in the plush teal-velvetine interior of the limo.

 

Murphy's

Sunday night, The Mondellos (Aaron & Dennie) played a show at a Memphis institution called Murphy's. This wrapped up their mini-tour of the South, which included a show the night before in Milledgeville, GA where they encountered a riotous bunch of college professors (yes, I said professors) throwing lamps into ceiling fans and lightbulbs at the walls. The Mondellos escaped with their hides and equipment intact, and were thrilled to play for a less destructive crowd at Murphy's.

See The Mondellos play...

...see them holler...

...and see Dennie leap over his drums.

Monday in Memphis

Monday morning we took a trip to the Shelby County Courthouse to get our marriage license!

The Ponderosa Stomp: Monday Night

The original reason for the trip to Memphis was to attend the Ponderosa Stomp, an amazing rock & roll festival which we were luckly enough to attend last year when it was in New Orleans before the hurricane hit. This year's festival had to be moved to Memphis, but the proceeds went to benefit New Orleans musicians. Each of the three nights of the festival went from 5pm-2am and there were three stages performing at once. We didn't get to see everyone, but we got to see and hear some great musicians and performers.

(click ticket for Monday night's schedule)

Here we are , dancing to one of the acts - probably Jay Chevalier (below, in the blinding metallic gold suit).

Dennie and Brian showed up a little later, Dennie his normal loop self and Brian loopy from driving the exhausting 15 hours straight-thru from Edgewater, FL.

See that mischievous twinkle in this otherwise benign-looking elderly gentleman on stage? Don't be fooled by the trappings of age - this is the mighty rockabilly singer Joe Clay and he tore up the stage. He sang like thunder, jumped off the stage and ran into the audience singing, took over on drums and then upright bass for a while, and never even broke a sweat! What a guy.

Did I say this was the Fifth Annual Ponderosa Stomp? Sorry, I misspoke - it was the Fith.

The Alarm Clocks capped off the night with an amazing show. These guys hadn't played together in 40-odd years until they were drawn out of retirement recently, but they still had the raw energy that they had as an Ohio teenage garage band back in the pre-punk 60s. Very cool.

The Wedding Day: The Crystal Grotto Shrine

Tuesday, May 9, 2006 - Noon

Tuesday morning, we made our way over to the breathtaking artistic oddity, the Crystal Grotto Shrine - located in the midst of the beautiful and elegant Memorial Park Cemetary.

The shrine was built in the 1930s by the unsurpassed Mexican concrete artist Dionicio Rodriguez. He developed his own secret techniques of working with concrete to stain and carve it to look like stone and wood, and reinforced everything with steel to make it last. After 70 years, the sculptures are still pristine and look like they grew out of the earth magically. His sculptures and structures are scattered throughout the country from Maryland to New Mexico, and several are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

To our great distress, there was a seminary class of about 30 students taking a tour of the shrine when we arrived, but they didn't stay long. Aaron's mom managed to head off the instructor from having a theological chat with the "Reverend" Brian Maguire (who only got ordained through the ULC in order to perform our wedding ceremony).

On the right side of the mountain (which Stacie pointed out bears an eerie resemblance to the sorting hat in the Harry Potter movies), you'll see the entrance to the Grotto.

 

Pre-Wedding Jitters

Aaron's mom, Beth, standing on one of the concrete foot bridges. Even close up, it looked and felt like real wood - almost as if it had been petrified.

Aaron's sister, Stacie and I sharing a laugh - what about? I have absolutely no idea.

Beth and Stacie, inside the Grotto. The entire inside is embedded with giant chunks of crystal and agate which caught the light and sparkled and glowed. There are also a handful of biblical scenes carved into alcoves in a curious folk art style.

The Reverend Brian Maguire reviewing the guest register.

Aaron and I take our first look around the enchanting and very surreal cave.

The Wedding Ceremony

This is where our organization broke down a bit, because we never actually decided on vows. We'd considered some Hawaiian vows, an Eskimo love poem, and a short & sweet Beatnik ceremony, but nothing really seemed to work for us. It ended up being very spontaneous and heart-felt, and I kissed Aaron before I was supposed to. The ceremony was dedicated in part to our dear, recently departed Dobie who we miss greatly. Dobie, wherever you are, my friend, I hope you have lots of cats to chase, soft laps to cuddle in and hamburgers on demand.

The big moment.

The rings are exchanged.

The kiss.

One kiss is never enough!

A strapless dress can collect a heck of a lot of birdseed.

Stacie Woods, Nancy Mae, Tom Walls, Dennie Carter, the Reverend Brian Maguire, Charles Gaskins, me, and my dear husband, Aaron Jarvis.

"Wonder Twin powers, activate!"

Post-Wedding Goofiness

I'm not sure why the Rustic Foot Bridge needed a sign.

Dennie pondering the universe from a concrete mushroom.

Tom, Aaron, Dennie and Charles pretending to be a family of chipmunks peering out of the concrete tree.

Nancy, Tom and Dennie.

You may recognize these flowers. Beth and Stacie had arranged for me to have a lovely orchid wrist-corsage to go along with my prom-dress wedding dress, but when we stopped by the florist to pick it up, the florist shop was closed for lunch and we were unable to get them. We briefly borrowed these plastic flowers to use during the ceremony. Michael and Jamie Martin seemed like a loving, happy couple that would be gracious enough to let us borrow their flowers for a few minutes. We brought them back as soon as we were done with the ceremony and thanked them.

The newlyweds.

The Reception

After the ceremony, we managed to get down the street to the Blue Plate Cafe before a torrential thunderstorm hit for a feast of waffles, fried green tomatoes, catfish, roast pork, omelets, meatloaf, cornbread, grits, fresh-baked biscuits and turnip greens.

After lunch, we went back to the hotel and gathered in the Jungle Room. We hadn't been planning on having a cake, but Stacie and Beth surprised us by arranging for a red velvet wedding cake with marvelous cream cheese icing and a classic Simpsons cake topper.

The Ponderosa Stomp: Tuesday Night

After the reception, we all headed back to the Stomp for another night of great music!

(click ticket for Tuesday night's schedule)

This is the great Herb Remington, who played steel guitar as a young man back in the 1940s with the legendary Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys and Spade Cooley, then later with George Jones and Merle Haggard. When it comes to Western Swing, nobody does it like Herb Remington. Our first official dance after our wedding was to the achingly beautiful instrumental, Sleepwalk.

This is the great Sonny Burgess, early Sun Records rockabilly legend. Behind him on drums is D.J. Fontana, who is best known for being the man behind Elvis for 15 years and over 400 recordings.

The Wild Guitar, himself! This is Aaron's idol, the legendary B-Movie star, Arch Hall, Jr. After making a handful of movies as a teenager (the best of which, are Wild Guitar and The Sadist), Arch went on to a career as a commercial pilot. Not much was heard from Arch until his movies were released on DVD a few years ago and Norton Records put out a compilation CD - the Stomp organizers tracked him down for last year's Stomp and organized an Archers reunion to the wild delight of the crowd (especially us!) We were ecstatic when we found out that he was going to be performing at the Stomp again this year, and on our wedding day no less. Yes, we can officially say that Arch Hall, Jr. played at our wedding reception!

The happy couple with our favorite movie star. The flowers I am holding and Aaron's boutonniere were bought off a homeless guy uh, entrepreneurial spirit by Brian, Tom and Nancy so that we could have our own wedding flowers after all.

An Afternoon in Memphis (Or, The Day After)

The next day, we kicked around Memphis for a while...

Here we are on world-famous Beale Street...

And here I am in Schwab's drugstore in front of the impressive display of spiritual incenses and candles for every need - I bought a couple of the "anti-jinx" ones.

Here is Aaron upstairs at Schwab's with an armload of funny hats and retro-styled hair products that were probably not designed for a blonde Anglo. Charles had wanted to be the "Ring Bear" so we bought him a bear hat, and because we've rarely seen Dennie eat anything besides a hamburger, we bought him a hamburger hat.

Real Memphis Barbecue

After visiting Beale Street, we headed over to the local favorite barbecue joint, the Cozy Corner. We'd heard that it was good, but we really didn't have an inkling about just how good it would be until we walked in the door and caught the rich scent coming out of the barbecue pit. They are known for their barbecue Cornish game hen and barbecue balogna sandwiches, but we stuck with the ribs and sliced shoulder. That first bite was so good I almost cried. The food was so incredible, we actually took pictures of ourselves eating it.

We had a slight misunderstanding when it came to ordering side dishes. We wanted a side of barbecue spaghetti (when you see that on a menu, how can you pass it up?) and a side of baked beans, but they'd run out of baked beans for the day. We told them we'd just take a second side of spaghetti in place of it - they looked at us like we were crazy and tried to offer other suggestions, but we didn't take the hint. See, what we failed to notice when ordering sides was that a side there is half a gallon. So, we ended up with a gallon of barbecue spaghetti. Yes, a gallon. By that point, we were too embarassed to admit we'd made a mistake and just acted like we really wanted it. Needless to say, we didn't make much of a dent in it.

The Ponderosa Stomp: Wednesday Night

(click ticket for Wednesday night's schedule)

Although by this point our feet were killing us and we were silly with exhaustion from our adventures so far, we headed over to the Stomp for the third and final night. Clearly, the rest of the audience was tired from the previous two nights of dancing too, as any and all available chairs were snapped up as soon as anyone moved out of them.

I'm not sure who it was being watched by ("chair is being watched"), but someone really didn't want to lose their seat.

At this point, I don't even remember who this musician was, but he had such incredible green satin shoes that I had to get a photo.

The third night was looking to be a bit of a disappointment as Barrence Whitfield, Scotty Moore, and the Rebirth Brass Brand from New Orleans all had to cancel. As tired as we were, I was almost wishing that we'd stayed at the hotel this night until the marvelous Clarence "Frogman" Henry performed and then my weary feet were forgotten! I'd only known of him from his novelty hit, "Ain't Got No Home" - which I've always loved, but I had no idea he was such an accomplished performer. He put on a wild show and commanded the audience with an authority that belied his walker and the fact that his biggest hit was recorded 50 years ago. You can see from my pink cheeks that the crowd was hot and sweaty from all the dancing!

We weren't the only ones tired and giddy after the long three day festival. This is the lovely Miriam Linna of Norton Records fame tackling Charles after he'd tried to stick toilet paper to her pants to make it look like she'd come out of the restroom that way.

Recoiling from the fray in the background is Andy, who was volunteering as a doorman the first night of the festival so that he could see the show the second night for free. He was a heck of a nice guy, and the best doorman we'd ever encountered, so we gave him an extra ticket we had for Wednesday (we'd gotten it for Brian, but Brian had to head back to Florida to take care of his Mom).

Still Trying to Get Through the Barbecue Spaghetti

Thursday. Still trying to make a dent in the spaghetti.

Sun Studio

We had a little time to kill before I had to catch my plane on Thursday, so we headed over to Sun Studio, the birthplace of rock & roll as we know it, for the tour.

It was a tiny building, and I think the gift shop area was larger than the actual recording studio, but this is where the magic happened. Johnny Cash. Elvis Presley. Jerry Lee Lewis. Sonny Burgess. Roy Orbison. Carl Perkins. And the first widely-acknowledged rock & roll record ever recorded, "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats with Ike Turner on piano.

Marion Keisker was the woman behind Sam Phillips - known mainly as being his secretary, it is highly likely that Sun wouldn't have been the success it was without her. She was responsible for talking Sam Phillips into giving an unknown 19-year-old Elvis Presley a chance - Sam didn't think he had anything special.

We left Memphis exhausted but happy, and eager for the rest of our life together.