Ok, here’s Cosmic Variance’s first Society Wedding coverage – but several Celebrity Physicists (at least in my field) replace the usual Hollywood set, or British Royals. (I managed to get in, depite being in none of the above groupings, by virtue of being a friend of the groom.)
Well of course I still managed to leave Los Angeles much later than I’d planned, in order to make it in time for the 3:00pm wedding ceremony in Santa Barbara. (I’m really really going off linen suits, ok? You waste tons of time ironing them, and they still make you look like you’re wearing an old potato sack, after ten minutes of wearing them…. sigh.) So it was less of a slow, relaxed drive and more of a focused, determined, fun -but careful- sprint! This resulted in me setting a new personal daytime record for getting up there (successfully road-testing some ealier modifications I’d made to the car).
There were a number of microbursts of torrential rain along the way and so I was 
concerned that the outdoor ceremony would be moved (as part of the hosts’ backup plan) but they went ahead with it, and so I turned up at the park in good time. The setting was quite lovely, actually. There was a huge amount of rain in the region, but somehow it stopped 15 minutes before the ceremony, the clouds all went away and a perfect blue sky appeared (with a lovely rainbow over downtown Santa Barbara in the distance). (Not long after the ceremony, new clouds appeared and the rain started up again, but we were by then indoors at the reception venue. Impressive timing.)
Here’s the blushing physicist pairing: the bride (UCSB Astrophysicist Crystal Martin) and the groom (UCSB Relativist Don Marolf):
That is Princeton astrophysicist Alice Shapley, doing crucial things with flowers and the train of the wedding dress. Don’s brother David is on the left. The ceremony was very nicely done. It was presided over by Syracuse University condensed matter physicist Eric Schiff, his first ceremony since qualifying to do them (he’s just behind Don).
The group of guests was rather rich with representatives of the great and the good of theoretical physics. Well, there was Cosmic Variance’s very own Mark Trodden (of Syracuse), sitting here with his wife Sara, and just in front of me was UCSB’s Jim Hartle:
And in my row was Perimeter Institute’s Rob Myers (front) and UCSB’s Gary Horowitz, sitting either side of Gary’s wife Corrine:
After the wedding ceremony, people stood around chatting for a while before heading off to the reception. Here’s another well-known pair, Gary Horowitz and Joe Polchinski (KITP-UCSB):
Inspired by some of the pairings I’d made earlier (matching various author pairings on papers famous in my field), I thought I’d carry on with this at the reception. So I got UCSB’s Steve Giddings and Joe Polchinski, and of course, Marolf (the groom) and Trodden:
And here is a grouping of potential co-authors of a paper that you could be reading one day:
Yep, I’m dying to know what will be the subject of a paper written by Myers, Polchinski, UCSB’s David Berenstien and USC’s Johnson!
And we have UCSB’s Mark Srednicki and David Berenstein (another promising co-author pair for a paper I’d love to read; in between them is David’s wife, Angela). Finally, there’s the co-authors Henriette Elvang (MIT) and Joe Polchinski.
Well, a good time was had by all. I got back into my car at 10:30 and made it back to LA in not much over an hour, keeping alert by singing along at the top of my voice to those amazingly modern Louis Armstrong trumpet solos from some of the excellent “hot fives” and “hot sevens” groupings of the 1920s.
-cvj
March 13th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Lots of congrats! I am sure that this pair will be full of joy an laughter (not only given the groom)!
March 13th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
One of the highlights of the ceremony was at the end, after they’d walked down the aisle (through a group of children blowing soap bubbles – brilliant touch) and off toward the trees where they were to take some photos. Even though they were a way off, Don’s wonderful and infectious laugh could be heard clearly, filtering back to the wedding guests.
-cvj
March 13th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Thanks for the pictures! I’ve met the bride a few times (as well as the maid of honor), so it’s great to see them on such a lovely day.
Having visited UCSB recently (and what a lovely place it is!), several of the people look familiar, though I’d probably know more of the bride’s side.
March 13th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
[...] Bits and bobs accumulated while I was traveling, offered up as I recover from the traumatic trip back to Chicago. (I wasn’t at Don and Crystal’s wedding, but many congratulations to the happy couple!) I had an early flight scheduled Sunday, but I was feeling lazy and unmotivated to arise at dawn to return my rental car, so I called United and asked whether I could go standby on a later flight. They indicated that there should be no problem, as the later flights had plenty of open seats. This turned out to be one of those things they believed even though they couldn’t prove, in fact even though it wasn’t true. After sitting in LAX, watching two flights to Chicago take off full without me, I finally squeezed onto a plane that was scheduled to reach O’Hare at 10:44 p.m. Of course, it took off only after an hour-and-a-half delay, and then landed safely around 12:30 a.m. Sadly, it landed not in Chicago, but in Rockford IL, since it was apparently a bit breezy in Chicago. (Windy city and all that.) After some tense moments when it appeared as if we might all climb aboard busses and drive the rest of the way, the plane did take off again, landed safely in the appropriate airport, and I endured a tense half an hour in which everyone on the flight retrieved their luggage except me. Finally mine came out, allowing me to proceed to the character-building exercise of standing in the rain for another half an hour to get a taxi. Arriving to my chilly lakeside condo at 3:30 a.m., since apparently some bozo left the window open when he left for L.A. For as much as I travel, it’s been a long time since I’ve been subjected to such delays, so I suppose I was due. [...]
March 13th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
More proof that physicists are an endogamous tribe…
March 14th, 2006 at 1:16 am
Actually Pyracantha, it is a relatively infrequent event in comparison to the usual patterns. Most physicists are not married to physicists, as far as I know.
-cvj
March 14th, 2006 at 2:33 am
So, did David cut his hair just for this event ?
March 14th, 2006 at 11:58 am
Dear Balding:
Geez! A guy just can’t decide to change his look without a whole lot of speculation as to the reasons why. Can’t anybody accept that I just wanted a new look?
March 14th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
And it’s a great look! Very Eric Clapton……
-cvj
March 14th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
That’s b/c most physicists are (straight) men. Forgot where these statistics come from, but about half of female physicists are married to other physicists, while about 5-10% of male physicists are.
March 14th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Congratulaions and best wishes to the happy couple (I admit congratualations from someone you doj’t know maybe of limited vaule:)). I do see that Crystal is an Astrophysicist and David is a Relativist. If you know of a relativist and a quantum theorist please encourage them to marry. Perhaps their child will be the one to merge the two great theories.
March 14th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Since unreferenced statistics bother me, I looked up the source of my previous assertions. It was a survey of APS members in 1990. I got the numbers slightly wrong. 50% of female physicists were married, 43% of those to other physicists, with another 25% married to another type of scientist. 74% of male physicists were married, 6% of those to another physicist.
March 14th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
So nearly 1/4 of female physicists are married to other physicists? Wow.
Do you have the numbers for astronomers married to other astronomers? Because the number of couples in astronomy seems ridiculously high (and when I say “ridiculously high” I mean, “I didn’t mean to contribute!”).
March 15th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Many congrats to Crystal and the groom!
March 18th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
My cornea’s are now seared–I’m typing this by touch, you know–after looking at Mark’s tie.
March 18th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Hey! That is a fine tie, my friend! I received many compliments on it at the wedding. Wait – maybe they were being sarcastic/just being nice to be kind… sense of self-worth fading fast …..
March 18th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
Mark: – GREAT tie!
-cvj