Make sure you check out the extended entry for more photos!

View from the villa:

Red rose centerpieces:

Bride's bouquet, detail:

more...

Posted by: Ensie at 06:00 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I'm home! Finally! It feels like ages since I've been able to relax with Frinklin, the dogs, the cats, and one angry, old cockatiel.

The trip to San Diego for Katie's wedding was fantastic, if quick. There was no down time at all. The flight down was Wednesday night, and we got to my parent's house at midnight.

Thursday morning there was coffee early in the AM before my Dad left for a few hours of work, then I kept Katie company while she had various body parts waxed. The entire female side of the wedding party also had manicures and pedicures - I was at the aesthetician's for six hours total. Our matching toes did look beautiful.

My Mom, Katie, and I left at 9 the next morning to pick up the wedding dress, my Mom's dress, and sister/bridesmaid's dress in Orange County. We thought we would be gone 4 or 5 hours, but ended up running numerous small errands as well, which only took, oh, NINE hours or so. There was the car that needed washing to alleviate the smell of kerosene that had spilled a few days earlier, the shoe cushions to enable us to stand for hours on end in heels, clear deodorant/antiperspirant to keep from marking the dresses, shirts that buttoned to be discarded after makeup was airbrushed on, and somewhere in there we had lunch.

At 6:30 on the dot, we arrived home - the exact same moment that my Uncle and his family (4 in all) showed up from Arizona and the notary public from the escrow company handling our mortgage refinance knocked on the door. There was utter chaos as the dresses were brought inside, wrapped in blue plastic so no one could see and hung on fake "busts" to retain their shape. I'm sure the notary thought we were insane.

The wedding rehearsal took almost the entire day Saturday. I got my first look at the winery location, which was absolutely gorgeous. Growing up in San Diego, Temecula was always considered the middle of nowhere, but it has really come into its own in the last few years. We drank sparking red wine while waiting for the wedding coordinator on the balcony, then spent an hour lining up and randomly bumping into each other trying to figure out the ceremony itself. I was told all wedding rehearsals are rather random, and somehow it all comes together on the actual day, which it did. The rehearsal lunch was delicious and we were home by 4 to sit by the pool and relax.

I'll write about the wedding itself in a separate post. It was fantastic.

Frinklin and I drove the newly married couple to LAX (and only got lost once) on Monday morning. They were off to Hawaii for a week of hiking, surfing, and relaxing. We picked up chinese food on the way home and the entire family spent the remainder of the day lounging poolside.

I had about 10 minutes of feeling calm, as the escrow company called me the next morning asking for some specific documents that I needed to provide. I spent several hours on the phone with various people, paranoid that I wouldn't be able to get them what was needed to close the loan on the following Friday. The panic lasted until we left for our flight home that afternoon, fortunately everything fell into place just as we were leaving.

Arriving home was weird - the dogs were all being boarded until the following morning. The cats loved it, once they realized were weren't crazy strangers breaking into the house. Percy took about 2 hours to stop leaping straight up in the air every time I touched him. It was actually pretty amusing, as each kitty freak-out would cause all the other cats to panic and scatter as well.

We picked up the dogs the next morning, and there was much laundry to do in preparation for the trip to New York. I was out the door at 5 AM on Thursday for BEA!

Again - a wonderful trip, but it made me glad Frinklin and I had eloped. I could not have handled all the drama and craziness surrounding a real wedding. Kudos to my sister, though. She handled it all, looking beautiful the entire time.

Posted by: Ensie at 04:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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