Gina's Wedding

Oh. My. Word. I just got back from the last wedding of the season. It was for my cousin, Gina. She got married in the LDS Oquirrh Mountain, Utah Temple. And it didn't snow then either. That makes 4 winter weddings I went to and no snow. Oh well. I guess the brides were happy. In case you were concerned, I did not catch the bouquet. It went to a 10 year old. Just because she's not even old enough to date doesn't mean I'm bitter...

This whole reception was decorated and thought of by my amazingly talented aunt and her friend. Our family also did all the food. We can crank out some serious food.

Here is a video of Gina seeing it decorated for the first time. Then you can scroll down and see all the snap shots and descriptions and tragic stories about elephants at weddings.

Unfortunately, these pictures don't even begin to convey the beauty of the reception. Maybe once the professional photographer gets her pictures up I will post a link.

The centerpieces were chandeliers my aunt bought on ebay on top of glass bowls or vases, which were on top of doilies, which was on top of a gray quilted square (that my other aunt made from old suit coats). On top of the square were more doilies, antique teacups filled with various flowers and sugared fruit. 

While we were up at the temple, my aunt's friends were busy finishing up the decorating. Someone had left a burner on in the kitchen, and then someone had put a plastic box on top of it. Needless to say it caught on fire. When my aunt asked if they had called 911, the friend said "No way! If they came in here and saw all the cords for the chandeliers running all over the place they would for sure shut us down!" Thankfully, the fire was contained and only a plastic box was harmed. As well as someone's pride, I'm sure. 

The above is the sign-in table. It's an old yellow-paged piano book with classical songs in it. The bride's sister then glued blank pages every other page with pictures of the couple. I wrote a haiku. The silver tree was done by another aunt spray painting about 20 large branches for her son's November wedding. We reuse when we can. 

As guests left, they got to fill up a box with homemade mini cookies that were in decorated jars. More doilies as well as stuffed birds were accented throughout the room (do you see Hedwig?).

Old chairs were in corners for people to sit and enjoy the reception, or look at some of the many black and white old framed pictures. Notice the silver platters on the wall or the black feathered wreath? Someone said this reception could have made for great "I Spy" pictures. And that's my grandma in case you were wondering. 

The hot chocolate stop - with hazelnut, vanilla and toffee syrups, marshmallows, crushed whoppers, crushed peppermint and cream. Most of the furniture my aunt already owned. She and her decorator friend would also go to DI (a thrift store in Utah) and pick up all sorts of antiques that they then displayed. 

No plastic china here. Antique plates were used to eat cake from (the most deliciously wedding cake I have ever tasted, I might add).

Speaking of cake, there the couple is cutting it. And a bird in the lower right hand corner. Dead, of course. 

The backdrop was made by tying different ribbon to a bar. Chandeliers were hung from the basketball hoop. They also had rugs everywhere to make it feel more homey and less basketball-courtey. 

Because all the food was made by us from scratch, it was a delicious affair. You got a glass plate (they had an eclectic mix to choose from) and then picked up: a vegetable cup pre-arranged with ranch dressing and slices of veggies; colored shaped sandwiches with fillings like apricot bacon (YUM!), pimento cheese or deviled ham; mini homemade cinnamon rolls; parfaits of chocolate and oreo, vanilla, wafer and banana, or vanilla, pound cake and raspberry in glass cups; raspberry frappes, and chex-mix in a bag. We had to wash all the glass plates and parfait glasses by hand. Thankfully I didn't volunteer for that job. 

And check out that beautiful centerpiece! They ordered flowers from Costco.com and had a friend who had had some experience with flowers do the arranging. Sadly, at the end of the night when everything was being packed back up the flowers froze because they were accidentally left outside for the night. 

 That's me, my mom and my sister Saundra. I'm surprised we didn't look more like zombies by the end of the night. 

And of course me and the bride. Isn't she just gorgeous? 


When they were setting up the reception, my uncle had to make 15 trips with his pick up to bring all the furniture, chandeliers, rugs, tree branches and other decorations to the church. The next day he had a brilliant idea to rent a UHaul truck. We filled it. 

Thankfully there were a lot of people there so clean up only took about 2 hours. To cover all the chandelier wires that ran from the tables to the outlets, someone used paper packing tape to secure them to the floor. Because of the nature of the tape, it didn't pull of cleanly so about 20 of us had to sit on the floor and slowly scrape away at the tape. It was a mess. 


At the end, we all agreed that it was a ton of work. I think I might just have a petting zoo for my reception and the people can eat the animal's food pellets. To make it even more fancy I'll even have an elephant so you can take your picture with the bride, groom and elephant.

Crossing the Road

I've decided that besides grocery lists and e-mail correspondents with my lawyer, I should start writing more. I got this fun thing called The Writer's Toolbox, by Jamie Cat Callan, which has writing exercises to help you loose brain atrophy weight. Because part of my plan is to take over the world (and then hand that job over to someone else so I can enjoy being world leader), I thought I might bore you with some of the results of those exercises. The below example is called "first sentence." You pull out a stick, and whatever sentence is on that stick becomes your first sentence and you then write for about 3 minutes, more if your microwave oven has less wattage power. 

 Crossing the Road
Michael sat down in the middle of the road and began to cry. He was just a baby chick, not yet a chicken that could complete something so mind boggling amazing that humans would question it for years to come. His father had crossed the road. His father before him. Chicken genealogy records only go back two generations, so he wasn’t sure if his father’s father’s father had also done it. But he liked to think he also had.

His plump and juicy legs hurt. His thighs were marinating in sweat and defeat. And his tender ribbed breast sunk deep down into his chest. This is it, Michael thought. They’ll grill me back on the farm. “Just why couldn’t you cross the road, Michael? Are you chicken?” they’d ask.

When things boiled down to it, Michael decided he’d rather cross the road than receive the golden nugget of humiliation award. Might as well wing it, he thought. And so, even though he felt like a chicken with his head cut off, he lifted up his foot…

And was immediately pounded to a one-fourth inch filet by the street sweeper.

Weddings, Food, Weddings, Holidays, Weddings and NEWS!

Oh my word. Word being "do you remember what blogging is dear Elissa?" Let's get to it, there's quite a bit to cover, and at the very end I have some news I'd like to share with you. I'll forgive you if you scroll through most of this, but I won't forgive you if you don't jump up and down once you find out my news at the end. No, I'm not engaged -- we'll just nip that in the butt right here and now.

Waaaaaaaay back in November of 2011 (you know, the year before the year of the end of the world) I went on a fancy schmancy semi-formal dance date. The evening included convincing the waitress that we had just attended a Voodoo wake/funeral where there was dancing because that's what you do at Voodoo funerals. They believed us.

My date, Cameron, and I pride ourselves in knowing it was because of us the party got started. We also would run around people who were sitting and try to convince them to dance. They weren't as convinced as the waitresses.

The week of Thanksgiving my family and I headed up to Idaho for a cousin's wedding (in which you would think there would be pictures, but nay, I cannot find any) and then back down to Utah for some food love (most people just call it Thanksgiving). We had two tables of pies. With pie labels.

Then two weeks later, I went back up to Idaho for Rachel R's wedding (now Rachel H). I had designed her invites and they were put in these sweet pocket envelopes. When I get off my lazy toenails, maybe I'll take a picture of the whole shebang, but for now you can enjoy this:

It was a wedded bliss weekend. We stayed at the groom's house, which also happened to be my first District Leader from the mish. Crazy, right? Being the good friends that we were, we dipped 1,345,982 strawberries (or something close to that).

And then we obviously had to get manis and pedis. I need a spa chair in my house.

I got a little over zealous when arranging the vegetable trays, but I wanted people to know that today was a wedding day, because seeing a girl in a poofy white dress carrying flowers sometimes doesn't get the message across.

Then the actual wedding came, and she and her hubby were sealed in the Idaho Falls LDS temple. It was probably 45 degrees, so it really wasn't that bad. She had gotten a bridal cloak, but while taking pictures without it, I decided to take upon the part of snow queen.

There's the beautiful bride with a creeper who photo bombed in the background.

Two weeks before, at my cousin's wedding, I caught the bouquet. When I came back to Idaho I had every intention of starting a winning streak. Alas, a woman in her late 40s caught it. She probably needed it more than I did. 

Back to California for Christmas and a cooked goose that tasted more like ham because it was ham. Here are our awesome Christmas cards that moi designed. I'm okay with you saying these are the best Christmas cards ever made. I've already come to terms that my humility is perfected. (Click to make bigger so you can bask in its amazingness). 

Christmas was pretty low key, as was New Year's. Basically just hung out with the fam because we're tight like unto a dish. Then we said goodbye to my brother, Trenton, who was going to the Atlanta Georgia mission for 2 years. Yes, I served in the Macon, Georgia mission, and now he was following in my tracting footsteps. Bye TrennyWennyMenny!

During all of this I managed to crank out a second wedding invite for my cousin Gina who will be getting married in a couple of weeks. It's quite different than Rachel's invite, but the same in that they are both invites for weddings. Pretty cool how I can keep to a theme, no? 

And then on to my third wedding in this nuptial whirlwind. This was for Rachel D (Yes. Two of my best friends are named Rachel. Don't let that blow your mind). She's from Alabama and her fiance (now husband) is from Wyoming. They were going to get married in Alabama, because who gets married in Wyoming in January, but the groom's family had a dairy farm they couldn't leave and just like that I got to fly to Billings, Montana. It's a small airport. 

I thought for sure it would be some great blizzard that people would tell their grandkiddies about, but luckily it was about 40 degrees and clear skies. My very talented friend, Adrian, was the wedding photographer, so I didn't take many pics. I just yelled at people to get out of the background or made the kids in the picture laugh. I'm pretty good at that. 

Get this. She got her dress from China. Never tried on or nuthin. Didn't even see a picture of it. Okay, she saw a picture and sent in her measurements and money, and they sent back this beautiful dress. I was super impressed. I don't know if I have the guts to do it, but I'm glad it worked for her. Especially because she saved mucho dinero.

That's me standing next to the groom in the picture above. These weddings have really taken a toll on my appearance. Rachel got married in the Billings, Montana LDS temple. Behind the temple there is this wide field with gorgeous rocky cliffs in the background. I only saw the pictures on the camera and they're breath taking; I'm excited to see them once Adrian puts them up. Yes, Adrian, that was a subtle message to you.

After the wedding, we went back down to the farm which was near Cody, Wyoming. While waiting for the reception, I went and kicked it with the calves. 

Remember how I caught the bouquet at wedding #1, but not at wedding #2? Well I was destined to catch it at wedding #3. Mainly because I was the only single gal who was still there. But part of it really was destiny, I just know it. When I get that picture of me fending off the non-existent single crazies, I'll make sure to post that.

I have such awesome friends and am so glad I can attend their weddings. I'll be going to wedding #4 in a couple of weeks (that will be for my cousin Gina) and then it looks like I'll have a little breather.

Speaking of breathers, you probably had to take a potty break this blog post is so long. But now it's the end and I get to tell you my exciting news. 

I'm moving to Alaska. 

You read that right. I'll be moving to Fairbanks, Alaska, in April to work for the cruise lines as a tour bus driver and guide. Essentially, I'll drive a 40 foot bus while entertaining...er...explaining touristy things. I get a microphone and a captive audience and I'm getting paid. Life doesn't get much better than this, folks. 

I have a feeling that once I get to Alaska this little blog is going to be updated a little more regularly than it has been. Someone suggested I set up a Twitter account and repeat the funny things people say to me. Or vice versa. So start sending me your favorite Alaska jokes. 

Kisses!