The Bride's Side
Named Maid of Honor for her lively spirit, great head of hair & thirteen years of friendship with the bride, Julie McMullen (Julz) is this Charlie’s #1 Angel. This half-Irish, half-Italian femme fatale hails from just southwest of Pittsburgh, attended college at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania and currently earns her living educating & counseling troubled teens. Julie’s accomplishments include sharing a brain with the bride, spending a night on the Roots’ tour bus & looking smashing in a Wonder Woman costume.
Dana Kretschman is a Philadelphia area native who has frequently been cited as a partner in crime with the bride. Dana & Surabhi met during their first year of medical school, specifically during remedial gross anatomy. United by their love for “Law & Order,” Kurt Cobain & Custom-Ink T-shirts, the duo eventually founded the domestic phenomenon known as 170. Dana’s hobbies include parallel parking, making fun of Jefferson medical students & karaoke at McGillin’s. The good doctor is a graduate of the University of Delaware, more recently Temple University School of Medicine & is currently pursuing a residency in internal medicine at Temple Hospital in Philadelphia.
Words rarely do justice in describing Katharine Criner but this will be a valiant attempt. Surabhi first met this bridesmaid on the powderpuff field, after which she said to Dylan, “I don’t like the girl with Crinedawg on her jersey.” Since then, however, the bride has come to adore Kate’s unabashed & unapologetic manner of living, [literal] thirst for life & insistence on having fun. Kate is from the Philadelphia area & a graduate of Penn State University. She will finish medical school at Temple this May & plans on pursuing a residency in orthopedic surgery.
The groom's sister Rachel Flipse rounds out the bridal party. The youngest in a family of two siblings, and ninth of eleven cousins, Rachel has compensated for her "littlest" status with prodigious displays of both academic and social achievement. Highlights of her undergraduate studies at the George Washington University included a semester learning Spanish and conquering a lifelong fear of strange meat-based foods in Spain, work with juvenile delinquents, cocktail parties with her roommates (certainly delinquents in their own right), and earning the right to attend Penn Law School in
fabulous west Philadelphia. Current un-met career goals include riding a horse in sub-zero temperatures, but work is being done on that front.
The Groom's Side
Tom Rafferty met Dylan on the very first day of college at Case Western Reserve University. Their time at Case consisted of what seemed like a series of all-night study sessions and other ill-concieved ideas. After college, Tom moved his base of operations from the high-flying Cincinnati to Cleveland corridor, to law school at Emory. Tom is now a wealthy attorney, plying his trade through a series of television commercials and catchy radio jingles in the greater Atlanta area.
Accounts vary, but most believe that Tom Smith met Dylan in the back of a station wagon. Among his other accomplishments, he has a strong claim for the unverifiable title of non-Flipse who has traveled the greatest number of miles in a car with Dylan, and is generally agreed to be exceedingly tall. Tom can usually now be found in Orlando, pursuing feats of strength, higher education, and other inscrutable activities.
Born just one day apart, in January of 1982, Neil Bardhan and Dylan have often led oddly parallel lives. They would not know this until meeting in Mansfield Gifted Camp some ten years later. Shared interests include being the brownest kid in some rooms, youthful Libertarian Politics, online communities, modifying graphing calculators, being the whitest kid in other rooms, and hippie music. Though destined to only move at right angles to Dylan, (Neil moves south, Dylan moves west. Dylan moves east, Neil moves north.) he is soaking up the grad student lifestyle while pursuing studies in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department at Rochester that the rest of us can only dream of comprehending.
Little brother no longer, Shantanu (Shan) Gaur, towers over his sister, the bride, in his six foot frame. Born in Canada, raised outside of Pittsburgh, Shan’s accomplishments include an impressive but prematurely terminated soccer career, a brief stint as $hancello, featured rap artist for a little known group called East Coast, and literally attempting to cure cancer. Baby brother is currently a senior at Harvard & will begin pursuing both his MD & PhD in the fall of 2008.
Groom and BrideBride and Groom
The bride-to-be is a complex creature. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she was born on November 28, 1981, in Mosul, Iraq, a little known fact. Around the tender age of two years, she moved with her parents to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada where she attended preschool and kindergarten, and picked up the nasty habit of saying “zed” for the letter Z. Hobbies at this time included wearing frocks, throwing tea parties for her dolls and riding her red tricycle.
By first grade, the threesome added a fourth, Shan, and the family moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Surabhi attended Beechwood elementary, a city school, where she learned swear words, failed a school hearing test, and honed her kickball skills. At the end of fourth grade the family closed up shop & moved to the ‘burbs which Surabhi really disliked at first. Bethel Park, however, grew on her and it was there that she survived the emotional & social perils of middle school, began playing tennis, made a close group of friends in high school (the Goons!), nearly failed Tech Ed & Home Ec in the same year, and had on average three crushes a week.
Surabhi graduated at the top of her high school class & fled southwestern Pennsylvania for the next four years to attend Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Highlights include a truncated Greek experience, working for a former Surgeon General, a polar bear swim in mid February, dinner with former Vice President Gore, and an on time graduation (phew).
In 2003, Surabhi moved to Philadelphia to begin medical school at Temple University. Favorite places in Philly include McGillin’s, Flat Rock and the Starbucks on Main Street in Manayunk. Not only has Surabhi eaten her way through Philly (see Amada, the Bellini Grill, and Primo’s Hoagies), she has run her way through it as well, as a veteran of both the Philadelphia Distance Run & the Broad Street Run. In her time in Philadelphia, Surabhi earned her MBA also from Temple University and like Dylan, plans on pursuing a residency in emergency medicine upon graduation from Temple University School of Medicine this May.
Surabhi met Dylan for the first time on August 20, 2004 at a medical school orientation bar crawl that she & Dana Kretschman organized. Legend has it that Dylan was entering one of the bars when Surabhi was leaving, and as the ring leader of this mission, she convinced Dylan to leave & go to the next bar. Their conversation was short-lived, as Surabhi got distracted as she is prone to do & they did not speak again until February 2, 2005 at McGlinchey’s Pub. Since then, they have been dating and are anxiously awaiting March 29, 2008!
The groom, Dylan, has already written
far too much about himself.
