Greg Baugues and Rachel Lazelle Got Married

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.

I know no one as passionate about anything as Rene is about cooking (actually, Devin David, our photographer, comes pretty damn close).  It’s been an inspirational honor to stand by his side as he has relentlessly pursued his dream during the last five years.  Rene is my best friend, and I will be disappointed if he can’t make it.  But I’ll be more disappointed if our wedding interferes with the pursuit of his dream. The marriage is more important than the wedding, and the relationships are more important than the attendees.

God has greased the wheels of this entire wedding planning process.  Things have seamlessly fallen into place at every turn.  Rachel and I have faith that when we look back at our wedding we will say of everything “that was exactly how it was supposed to be.”