Or in this case, the temple!!! So as many know and some don't know my little brother, Shaun, married his long time girlfriend (4 years), Cat (short for Catherine), on April 11th 2009 (yes. Over Easter weekend). I am now officially the only one in my family of marriageable age (Brendon is on a mission so that doesn't count, and Nana hasn't been to school yet and is still 17, so she doesn't count) that isn't married. I asked my mom what she would do after she planned Nana's wedding (because she is soo used to planning weddings and she won't have any to plan after Nana) and she said "Plan yours!" Sad day for me!! I'm not bitter or sad at all. I actually think it's hillarious!!!
Anywho, I took off a week and a day of work since it takes one whole day to drive down there and the rest of my family was going to be there at least for half the week and drove down on Saturday all by myself. I took my sister Mindy's car as she was going to Disneyland for a week with my brother Chad and his family and they were going to drive their car home on Sunday (the day of easter), so I took their car with them. My brother, Kelby, his wife, Amber-Rose, and daughter, Mikkelle, let me stay with them in their spare bedroom. My parents stayed there a few nights as did my sister Cara and her husband John. We did some major house hopping between their house, my brother Chad's house, and my grandparents house!! It was kind of fun!! I spent the week sleeping, watching movies, watchings conference (general conference was the week before the wedding), shopping, getting my hair done, reading Brisinger (book number 3 in the Earagon series if anyone knows it), and playing games!! It was a blast!!
Friday night before Shaun's wedding we got together as an entire family (except Brendon who is on his mission) and had a mini bachelor party for my brother. Nothing gross. We just played games and went around the room and told why Shaun would make a great husband and father. It was fun to be together as an entire family again since it has been 2 years since that has happened!!
The next day was the actual wedding. They got sealed in the Salt Lake Temple (since Cat served her mission on Temple Square) and the sealing was done my Elder L. Tom Perry. He is a very large man in person. He did the sealing because he served in the stake presidency with my grandpa in Sacramento years ago and before Brendon went into the MTC, my parents visited him in his office. When he found out that Shaun and Cat were gettting married in Salt Lake he insisted on doing the sealing!! It was amazing!! He is gentle giant and really funny!! He had some amazing insights on marriage and what it entails and how to make it work. I wish I had had a pen and paper to write them down. Cat's family didn't know that he was doing the sealing so they were pleasantly surpised when he walked in the room. Cat was beaming the whole time and my brother had his cute little Shauny grin on (for those of you who know him pretty well, you know what I mean)!! They looked soo happy and it was a beautiful ceremony!!
Afterwards we took the traditional pictures and I got put in charge of Shaun's new video camera to take video of all the proceedings. I also got his camera so I was way busy with that!! Thus I did not get ANY pictures with my own camera. I did have fun though with cousins and taking random video.
After pictures it was off to Chuck-o-rama for a brunch. Everyone made it except for Shaun and
Cat. They were having a good old time taking pictures and showed up for the last half hour that we were there. They were totally in their own world.
That night the reception was at a reception hall. They decided to rent one out as it was easier than making our family get all the decorations and stress over decorating a church in a place that no one was familiar with!! We did bring some of our own decorations anyway and it turned out B-E-A-UTIFUL, but once again, I had Shaun's video camera so didn't get any pictures of my own. I had fun though seeing and talking to cousins and friends (especially ones from Maryland) I haven't seen in FORVEVER, dancing my guts out, and video taping random people. Our family was asked specifically by Shaun and Cat to do a little performance. If anyone knows Cat, you will know that her favorite youtube video is Vitas Opera #2 (if you haven't seen it, you need to go watch it. It's crazy!!) so we really wanted to do that. But we figured that no one else would get it besides our family and Cat, so we did a mini skit of Shaun and Cat's 4 year rocky relationship (Chad was Shaun and Nana was Cat. It was HILLARIOUS!!) and then made up different words to The Little Mermaid's Kiss the Girls. Cat and Shaun were rolling. I'm not sure that anyone else got it, but we had fun and so did Shaun and Cat. Afterwards they left for their honeymoon to go to Mexico, only after my brother Kelby stole Shaun's keys and made him chase him. It was good times.
That night our family stayed up until 3 am playing card games. Chad was in rare form and even little Mikkelle stayed up and was absolutely hillarious because she was acting like she was drunk cause she was soo tired!! My family is hillarious for anyone who knows them, so we had a pretty good time.
About 2 weeks later, we had an open house in Elk Grove California for all our friends who couldn't make it!! Too bad it was the same night as my old roommates reception and she is part of a family that has like 10 brothers and sisters in the Elk Grove area, so not as many people came as expected, but it was still fun. We got to decorate the church this time and although it was fairly simple it was still beautiful. My sister, Mindy, and I did Cat's hair for the reception. It looked gorgeous. I mainly hung out with my friend James, who was nice enough to come and was the only one from my YSA ward to come, and Nana and her friends. I did visit with more family as well. This time I got to take pictures as I was NOT in charge of Shaun's video camera. It turned out great. It was less formal than a reception, so not too much stress!! We opened Shaun and Cat's wedding gifts that night as an end to the evening.
Overall the wedding was fun and we now have a fun new member to our ever growing family!! Yipee!!
No comments:
Post a Comment