Nicole and I got married in 2001 on the East Coast, which was great for my family but not so great for our West Coast friends. We planned to have a reception in Seattle for those folks, but it didn’t come off that year. We decided to do it the following September for our one year anniversary. Our original plan was just to have a big party. Then we considered our potential guest list and realized practically everyone on it was a friend from the game industry or a gamer. Instead of doing a more traditional reception, we decided to do a weekend long event we dubbed WedCon.

We were able to rent out a big room in our local community center for Saturday. Nicole cooked a ton of great food and I brought down a bunch of games. We had about 50 guests, including friends from Vancouver, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and DC. We ate, drank, and played games all day long. I didn’t get in that game of Revolt on Antares that I wanted, but otherwise things went great. People who didn’t know each other met over boardgames. The hardcore retired back to our house, where we talked late into the evening. Then on Sunday Nicole threw a brunch at our place for the out of town guests and a few other folks. This turned into another day of gabbing and games, in which I finally broke in my copy of Carcassonne.

WedCon was five years ago this September. In the aftermath of that weekend, Nik and I talked about making it a yearly tradition. Reality made that difficult, but I look back on that event so fondly I wonder if it’s time to think about doing it again. WedCon 2: Electric Boogaloo?