Brian & Jane's July Wedding

It's been three and a half months since our wedding. Since that time, we've had a spectacular honeymoon in Costa Rica and two weeks after arriving back home, we found out that we're expecting our first child in May (Brian says we're very efficient). Today, I'm home from work with a sore throat and the beginnings of what could be a chesty winter. I've been thinking about our wedding cake all day! It was so delicious. Marina Souza of Just Cake in Aptos make it for us. Three layers and covered in roses. Lemon/olliberry, mocha/chocolate. Come to think of it, there IS one piece tucked away in our freezer waiting first anniversary time. Nah, I'll wait.

Anyone who has ever met my mom and CERTAINLY anyone who has ever been to her house knows my mom has good taste. From her elegant yet eclectically furnished home to her cover-of-Bon-Appetite-Magazine dinner parties, this woman knows how to entertain. Ever since I could toddle, I watched her throw tasteful luncheons for entire women's clubs, exquisite dinner parties for my father's colleagues, and family holiday extravaganzas that took weeks to prepare. While other kids were eating Ho-Ho's after school, my sister and I would occasionally come home to 3 layer pineapple cheesecake adorned with homemade Guitard chocolate leaves. So, even though I am a strong minded 36 year-old woman with good taste of my own (although stylistically quite different than my mom's), it was with some trepidation I presented my mother with what Brian and I were planning for our wedding. Not only were we wanting to have it in the woods at my Crazy Uncle John & Aunt Sheri's house (the good kind of crazy but crazy nonetheless), but we were going to march down the aisle to live bagpipe accompaniment and walk to our reception. Oh yeah, and the piece d' resistance... everything was to be done in deep red and deep orange with a sort of Indian theme.

Granted, there was a short adjustment period while she mentally shuffled all the details and kept trying to find the sure recipe for disaster in my plans but to her credit, she never ridiculed even when my details must have sounded like sour notes to a trained musician's ears. The stress for my Uncle and Aunt was brought up and discussed. Logistics of getting guests from place to place. Mosquitos, mosquitos, and more mosquitos. Finally, after a couple of weeks of holding back complete embracement, darn if she didn't tell me she loved it. She loved it! The whole thing! Guess what she loved most of all? My crazy, could-have-looked-like-a-circus-but-didn't colors. The day of my wedding, my mom put on the reddest coat and scarlet lipstick she could find. She turned up with the orangest candles, the reddest roses, and the most delicious, vermilion, 12 gallons of wedding punch anyone has ever seen. We had a ball.

One of the most gratifying conversations I've ever had with my mother in my adult life was about a week ago when she told me how glad she was that I stuck to my vision of my wedding and didn't waver. She said she wouldn't have changed a thing. Now that's a compliment.

P.S. Check out my mom and dad hanging with Crazy Uncle John's stuffed kangaroo, Howard, at the rehersal.

Three little fairy princesses. That's what they looked like to me. Resplendent in white tulle tea length dresses with crimson silk rose petals layered inside the tulle ("Wow, rose petals are INSIDE my dress!" one of them commented.) people kept using words like "angel," "heaven," and "perfection" to describe the way Ella, June, and Georgie looked.

They all took rose petal throwing with the seriousness of someone learning a lifesaving new skill. All of them decided to start "practicing" on their own months before the big day. "Should it be overhanded throwing or underhanded throwing, Auntie?" "How big will our baskets be?" "Will we have a lot of petals or just a few?" "How will we know where to go?" I had not considered how stressful the idea of being a flowergirl and all that it entailed might be for a 3,4,&5 year-old of superior intelligence.

We had a casual rehearsal the night before and filled our baskets with leaves. It was a little confusing. "Should we walk down the little road through the middle of the chairs or go around them?" (Answer: Down the middle, sweetie.) We also had to get past the initial urge to throw the petals AT people. Hey, it seems fun to me too. But, alas, when it came time to "gently toss and walk slowly like a princess," never did three girls rise to the occasion like our girls did. Halos of blossoms circling their heads, comfy white shoes on their feet, and a love in their hearts for their Auntie Nane and Uncle Brown that shot out of every pore in their bodies, thinking about them for too long chokes me up they were so incredible. It was as much their day as it was ours - they had been looking forward to it for as long as we had - and boy did they shine!

We loved our wedding. We have not stopped talking about it since it happened. There are so many things about it that we dug but the biggest by far is we loved how all of our friends and family participated and helped out -- not because we asked them to but because they wanted to. Each person went the extra mile in their own unique way. From planting flower gardens in our colors (deep red and deep orange) to setting up the reception hall the morning of, to dancing like maniacs at our reception to show their joy and support, everyone turned out for our day in spades.

People have commented on how we struck some sort of balance between elegance and naturalness, between doing justice to a formal traditional occasion but without losing any of the fun. Nothing felt fake or put-on and everything was beautiful. Our flowers were the most beautiful wedding flowers in the history of wedding flowers. Period.

The evening was a bit warm and the food a touch too spicy (not for us though!) but in the end, we loved every bit of it. Thank you to all of our beloved family and guests. You all made our day.