We made a trip back to Flagstaff/Williams last week to attend my niece, Christi’s wedding. After deciding on a long engagement the wedding was in the planning stage for two years making for a great deal of anticipation leading up to the event. I am pretty close to my niece and was bummed to have missed so many pre-wedding activities including wedding dress shopping due to covid, the bachelorette party that old ladies aren’t usually invited to and the bridal shower as we had already returned to the lake. Fortunately the wedding weekend made up it.
Out of towners were invited to an outdoor Mexican themed rehearsal dinner Friday evening following by dancing in a local cowboy bar. Saturday brought the main event including the ceremony and reception topped off by a Sunday morning brunch hosted by yours truly, Ann & Paul. If you haven’t already guessed, Paul did most of the work, although I did get up early, sliced some bananas and helped clean up. The entire weekend was pretty much “nirvana” so I’ve decided to share my “top ten” wedding highlights:
- Spending quality time with family that we don’t see very often especially all at the same time.
- Meeting, greeting and catching up with old and new family friends.
- The opportunity to dress up and view all manner of fashion on display. There was a sparkly black and blue lace number that made me pine for my longer leaner younger self.
- A lovely venue on a golf course; in this case the wedding took place under a flower draped gazebo overlooking a pond and the mountainous pines of northern Arizona. With a heatwave underway, we got lucky on the weather with slightly cloudy skies, a slight breeze and no monsoon season downpour.
- There were beautiful flowers and lovely decorations gracing the premises.
- Great photo opportunities making memories all the more special.
- Excellent food and, dare I say, “open bar!”
- Cake with both lemon and chocolate options plus, late night “mac and cheese” for those needing fortification before heading back downtown for more fun and frolic.
- Dancing like a maniac to the music of the young and young at heart, like myself.
- Finally, and most importantly, the joy and happiness that comes from celebrating love and commitment between two people. Listening to the personally written vows of young couples always leads to barely contained emotions pondering one’s own relationship/s.
I don’t know about you but this seems like a lot of good stuff coming from one weekend’s festivities. I wanted to give a speech but that job was brilliantly handled by my brother, Mark, father of the bride, who did an excellent job capturing Christi’s early life and path to finding her life partner, Garrett. He’s a pretty good guy although he kicked my backside on the dance floor in the cowboy bar. That’s what I get for trying to keep up with young people. So in closing, I suggest you all get yourself out there to a wedding; “tis the season!”