On Saturday, we were woken up by a severe thunderstorm that shook our windows and created a muddy beach in the empty lot beside us. This wasn’t a good sign for the wedding that we had to attend later in the day, but surprisingly the sky cleared up and the ground dried up just a few hours later.

The church wedding was in Mississauga, just down the block from us. We headed there for noon, but there was a problem as we got closer. Apparently, the morning’s thunderstorm had wrecked havoc on the neighborhood (30 hydro poles down), with the epicentre (Cawthra and Atwater) being the church we had to go to! The police blocked off Cawthra and we had to wander around the side streets just to get to the church.

There were rumors that a tornado had landed (although later checking, it was just a tall tale) but while false, the destruction was pretty intense (here are some more photos). After making it to the church and parking, we wandered up to the police line. The storm snapped concrete pillars!

The whole area was without power, including the church; and the ceremony happened without AC or a PA system – but at least everyone made it and the wedding happened! The wedding also made it onto the news!

Residents of the area are without power, something that could continue for up to a week. A wedding scheduled for Saturday afternoon at church directly beside the poles’ wreckage continued without power.

After the ceremony, Pauline and I headed down to Port Credit to grab some lunch. We went to Ten which we’ve thought about going to so many times before. I had the shaved roast beef sandwich with sea salt fries from their lunch menu, which was $10 exactly and not $9.99!

Afterwards we slowly made our way up to the reception, which was just down up the block from us at the Mississauga Convention Centre. This was my first time at an Italian wedding, and it was huge. They had at least 38 tables, so almost four hundred people!

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: italian, toronto, weddings