The Freckled Girl: Columbus, OH

Downtown Columbus, OH

From June 24th-27th, I was invited as Dylan's guest to attend the wedding of one of his best friends, Walter Wietzke in Columbus, OH. Our friend Chris Webber was also a wedding guest and we decided to carpool it together on the 13 hour drive to the Buckeye State.

It was seriously one of the most boring drives scenically, but with good company and each of us taking turns at the wheel we finally reached our destination around 7:30 pm on Friday the 24th. I was hoping for a good night's sleep the evening prior, but was annoyingly awakened by Dylan's phone ringing at 2am. Trust me, we were both pretty annoyed. I mean...who calls at 2am? I thought it might have been a drunk dial by a former flame of his wanting a booty call or perhaps a family emergency. Instead it was a friend of his (also on their way to the wedding) who decided to call to see if we were on the road and to warn us about construction. A text message during normal waking hours would have sufficed. I'm a horrible sleeper as it as, so I wasn't able to fall back asleep and my alarm clock was already set to 5:15 am. I opted to be the first person to drive, so you can imagine how little coffee was going to do for me.

With all that unpleasantry behind us, we arrived just in time to partake in the rehearsal dinner at a really awesome and historic bar/restaurant in downtown Columbus called The Elevator, a building built in the late 1800's and used to be a billiards and gentleman's saloon. We decided to stay at the Comfort Suites which was located in the Brewery District and near German Village. Who knew that either was so significant in Columbus?

Never being in Columbus before, I actually was really impressed with how clean the entire city was. Not to mention that they still had a significant amount of old buildings still standing everywhere. We walked around and explored a bit on Saturday, as the wedding wasn't scheduled until 6:30pm at the historic Victorian Kelton House. We happened to be in Columbus during their big music and art festival called ComFest, which stands for Community Festival and was happening at Goodale Park and near their arts/entertainment district. We discovered a really cool indoor market nearby and stopped there for lunch a few times during our visit and also ventured to the festival for a short walk-through. The weather was pretty hot and we needed to save our energy for the wedding.

The weather couldn't have been more perfect for their wedding, which was held in a shaded garden behind the house. The ceremony was short and sweet, Dylan performed a nice song on his viole da gamba and then we proceeded to dance and party at a bar downtown after the wedding. It was a really nice ceremony overall and come Sunday, I found myself really tired and completely beat. On our last day, we walked around our hotel neighborhood, which was part of the German Village. It was pretty amazing actually -- a lot of the streets around us were cobblestone and the houses were brick and really quaint. I stopped into the famous Book Loft, which is a block long book store and purchased a mystery novel. We stopped and had ice cream at Jeni's, which everyone kept insisting we try. And then it was back to the hotel as I had to get up at 5am to catch a 7am flight to Philadelphia to visit my family. Thank you to Dylan, Chris, the Wietzke Family and of course the Bride's family for making my first visit to Columbus so much fun!