Wedding Season

You know what’s nice? Going to a wedding you didn’t have to plan and you can just kick back and relax and enjoy it. 🙂 It’s so nice not having ANY wedding things to plan or obsess about or think about. Suddenly I have all this free time and it’s SO NICE. Life feels calm and relaxed and just…nice. You really don’t realize how much it takes over your life until you’re in the middle of it.

Over the weekend my cousin Joey got married here in Portland. Him and his fiance, Cat, had moved to Denver a few years ago but the wedding was here. The wedding itself was at a church in Lake Oswego (I was happy it was a nice, sunny day after a week of rain! As a recent bride I know how stressful it is checking the weather forecast!). Check out their sweet ride!

Then the reception was at a country club in West Linn. The wedding started at 2pm because the drive from the church to the reception was kind of a long one. The country club was gorgeous and nestled in between farms and ranches and rolling hills. It was beautiful countryside I’d never seen before.

The reception was actually in the tent-looking building next to the club (left in the photo). It was a big space and there were a ton of tables but still room to move around and not feel crammed in there. I’m not sure how many guests were there, I’d guess 200? Definitely bigger than my wedding. It was a cool space. There was a dance floor in the middle, too.

My aunt, the mother of the groom, used to own her own floral business and she did the flowers for the wedding. She did a great job. They were really beautiful. Some of them were dahlias, like my wedding. Awwwww. 🙂

The best part about the wedding was that we were guests! And could have fun and socialize and actually talk to people we didn’t have much time with at our wedding last month. It was nice. Things were so chaotic at my wedding and I felt badly that I didn’t get more time with each guest. This was the perfect opportunity to see everyone. I even got to see one of my cousins, sister of the groom, that I hadn’t seen in several years.

And there was a photo booth! Michael and I actually got to enjoy it, too. Unlike our wedding where I never actually got to use the photo booth, I used this one. So did my parents.

So did Grandma. 🙂 The diva. She loves those photobooths.

They had a live band, a pretty talented guy who I’m guessing was a Dave Matthews Band cover band? They played a bunch of DMB and then other songs and there was a DJ, too, that would play music when the band took a break. It was a fun vibe and everyone was dancing up a storm.

Dinner was buffet, chicken or steak with blue cheese, two different kinds of salad, broccolini, potatoes, bread and fruit. I got the steak and a few potatoes. The salad had candied walnuts, blue cheese and apples in it. The cake was vanilla with I think raspberry filling? I didn’t eat a ton and I only had 2 glasses of wine and one glass of champagne for the toast. I don’t think I did too much damage to my diet..I guess I’ll know in a few days when I do a check-in on the scale. My hope is that all the dancing burned off some of those calories!

It was a great wedding and Michael and I had a lot of fun catching up with people, talking about our honeymoon and kind of reliving the best parts of our own wedding. Everyone was so sweet and complimentary about our wedding and that made me happy—all the planning had been worth it.

It was so cute seeing the new couple so happy, too. Made me a bit sentimental. 🙂 Awww weddings.