wedding bells

This weekend was my cousin's wedding. She's about 3.5 years older than me. She married someone significantly older, who already has 2 kids, including a young (i'm not sure how old) unwed mother, making my cousin a grandmother at 28. Crazy! and I complain about feeling old. How about marrying into being a grandmother!

I wasn't really expecting to have much fun. But the whole thing turned out great. I haven't been to a wedding in ages, and I hope they're all like this from now on.

We got to the wedding about 1 minute too late. we arrived, we saw the bride just about to walk, and we sat just as she arrived at the altar. The ceremony was super short, it couldn't have been longer than 15 minutes. They didn't even repeat the vows. the priest just said them, and all they said was "I do." And the priest, was such a jolly little man. Way too happy to be talking about the sanctity of marriage.

The wedding was in some annex of the crystal cathedral. We didn't get to go into the church they have on TV, but we did get to wander the grounds in the 1.5 hrs between when the wedding ended and when the reception place would open the doors. It was strange! There were all these bronze statues of biblical figures, and animals, mostly they were creepy when you got too close. Especially the shiny, silver robotic looking baby jesus, his giant silver head with the only silver thing around, with his swaddling cloth, mary and the donkey all being bronze and not shiny. I came up with a fantastic idea to make a religious carousel for large churches, or to travel to church events.

The reception was at someplace called the "hacienda" in Orange County. at first I thought it was weird, it really was like a converted house. The tables were set up so that some were indoors and some were out, but it worked out really well. The dance floor was indoors where there were a few tables set up for lounging, but the eating tables were all away from the music, so you could hold a comfortable conversation or go to the dancing room. This was so much better than the typical one room thing, I was very impressed.

As you walked into the recpetion you were handed a glass of champagne or apple cider. This champagne was actually good, unlike every other free champagne I've ever had. I managed to procure 3 glasses through out the evening, and then I made the mistake of going for my 4th, when it was replaced by something horribly vile. At that point I switched to coffee. I noticed that the good champagne was labeled by the hacienda, so I guess I'll never know what it was.

The best man, the teenaged son of the groom, gave the only speech of the wedding. It was short, appropriate, heartfelt, and absolutely un-embarassing. Kudos!

The meal was surprisingly large, and decent for wedding food. A large chicken breast, pasta and veggies with alfredo sauce. It was more than I could eat, and I was hungry. The cake was frosted with a basket weave pattern, and there were real flowers on top. It was white with strawberry jelly.

The first dance was a song I didn't recognize (no surprise there). but it was nice. There was a fairly decent mix of English and Spanish music (for the groom's side). There was nothing horrible like the chicken dance or the bunny hop that I though was ubiquitous at American weddings. And it turned out to be really fun dancing with my cousins and aunts and uncle.

There were some random people I knew from high school, and a few that i recognized, but couldn't remember at all. I think I impressed them all by how fantastic I looked, and how much more charisma I have now. (2008 reunion, look out!)

I had a very appropriate wedding outfit picked out, it involved a new flowery skirt and my very respectable casmir sweater. but then the weather turned warm, and a casmir sweater would have given me heatstroke. So the morning of the wedding i tried on half my wardrobe, and it turns out that i have nothing appropriate to wear in warm weather. So against my better judgement I wore a spagetti strap black tank with my aforementioned skirt, livened it up with a bit of jewelry and a bow in my beautiful long curls (innocent bow to counteract boobs, i think it worked). My outfit turned out to be appropriate enough. And I wore neither the sweater in the car, or the light wrap i carried around. I should have the appropriate wardrobe situation rectified by the end of this weekend now that i know what i'm lacking. yea for memorial day sales!

Alas, I didn't catch the boquet. It was basically thrown straight to the maid of honor. And I forgot to take a piece of cake home to put under my pillow to dream of my future husband. But it was still a good wedding. I wish Heather and Leo all the best!

Sunday consisted of watching tv and reading ice cream books. I'm very excited!