Greg Baugues and Rachel Lazelle Got Married

The first time I met Devin was sitting in a circle of newcomer’s after one of my first visits to Park Community Church.  I disliked him at first because while introducing ourselves Devin mentioned he liked to cook and it was obvious by the way he talked about food that he was a far better cook than I was (which, three years later, is still very true).  My dislike quickly dissipated when we bonded over a shared cigarette… smokers have to stick together at church.  (We’ve both since quit).

Today, Devin and I are in the same small group (like bible study, but with cooler, more handsome men).  Through that, him living four blocks away from me, and many shared culinary adventures, he has grown to be one of my closest friends.  In addition to his mad picture-taking skillz, I am excited to have another Christian brother and representative from Park Community Church present at our wedding.

When Rachel and I were looking at photographers in Washington I would send their work to him for critique.  After eviscerating one of the candidates in a very polite, professional way, he decided he could use a destination wedding in his portfolio.  He said “I know Rachel will be a beautiful bride, and I will be jealous if anyone else photographs her.”

As you can see from the pictures below, Devin is a rockstar at making people look like rockstars.  He is as passionate about photography as Rene is about cooking.  He is the standard by which I judge all other photographers.

You can see more of Devin’s work at www.devindavid.com,

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Rene working next to Grant Achatz

Rene Deleon is a world-class chef.  His M.O. for the last 10 years has been to move to a city, work in the best restaurants in town, and move on.  He did this in his hometown of Las Vegas, went to culinary school in Vermont, and then did stints in Boston and Cincinnati.

While in Cincy he heard about Grant Achatz and his new restaurant Alinea (see video below).  Rene packed two suitcases, mostly full of cookbooks, and with no apartment, no job and only $1,000, hopped on a plane to Chicago. Two days later he rented a room at 2321 W North Ave, the same sketchy apartment building I had moved into two weeks prior.  We remained roommates for four years.

Though It took a year-and-a-half after moving to Chicago to get there, he’s now worked at Alinea for over three years, and it’s time for him to move on to the next phase of his dream: Spain.  He has his sights set on an internship at El Cellar Can Roca, currently ranked by San Pellegrino as 5th best restaurant in the world. Unfortunately his travel plans are not yet set, so we don’t know if his trip will overlap with our wedding.

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In 2005 Google released Analytics, a product to analyze website traffic.  Like most every other product Google offers, it’s free, better than the competition and has become the de facto standard in its class.

Through the web development company I work for, I have access to analytics reports for a number of web properties including some that receive hundred-of-thousands of visits per month.  None of these however, have captured my attention as much as the 300 visits received by the wedding blog I launched three weeks ago.  The numbers just mean more when you can put a name on each of the visitors.

Let’s take a look:

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I’ve been tasked with creating the play list for our wedding day (and presumably, wedding night).

If you were creating a wedding playlist, what songs would be on it?