The Wedding

We're home safe and sound - thankfully...

A big shout out to my buddy, Susan, for being a weekend zookeeper - despite the fact that Odie whined all night as she tried to sleep over. I'm sorry, Su....

JayR and Jenny's wedding - what a beautiful event!!! I took a ton of pictures and some of them came out nicely:

This is Jenny and Angelica in the Bridal Suite. She looked stunning - Jenny was the absolute picture of beautiful that day...she was cool and seemed relaxed and looked like she enjoyed everything.
This was Angel in the hallway outside the Chapel at Jericho Terrace in Mineola, NY (it was very pretty!). She took this job seriously and did just fine - walked and threw her petals in the right place and listened to directions. It made me so proud of her. Her favorite parts were the dress, the shoes and the makeup...
The wedding ceremony took place in the Chapel at the Jericho Terrace. I took this picture with my Canon 75-300mm, no flash. We didn't have the best seats for the ceremony, which was in the middle of a circle.
This is the happy couple - right before we had the professional photographer take our group photo with them. She just looked like a doll....

I don't cry at these kinds of things, but I did when JayR and Jenny publicly thanked their parents and JayR ended up in tears...me too. I also got teary when he danced with his mom to Kenny Rogers' "Through the Years" (I love that song)!!!

It was the biggest wedding, I'd ever been to - 390 guests at last count. There had to be at least 100 people at the rehearsal dinner - JayR's family provided dinner for all their out of town guests at the hotel they were staying...JayR's dad, my Uncle Mario is an amazing cook - I grew up with his cooking. (I took that picture of Angelica at the rehearsal dinner)

JayR and I go way back - I know we are distant cousins but we were close friends as kids. His dad, my Ninang Emily (godmother and mom's best friend) and some other friends of my parents would visit nearly every weekend to play mahjongg for 3 days straight. Everyone would come over late Friday night, stay all day Saturday, and most of the day Sunday since I was in the 8th grade. We learned how to play mahjongg by watching them. When I wasn't doing something in school on the weekends, I was with JayR and his sisters, Marlette and Marilou. They were quite shy in the beginning, clinging to their father's leg for dear life (they're all a little bit younger than me) but once they warmed up, we lived for these weekends and getting busted for making so much noise in the middle of the night and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and having Uncle Mario's cooking all weekend long. We went on vacation to Lake George together. We celebrated holidays and birthdays and graduations. JayR was my prom date (I was single in Senior Year of high school) and he was a groomsman in my wedding. He's Angelica's Ninong (godfather). And I'm ever so glad that he married Jenny (they've been together longer than I have been with Adam).

Congratulations, newlyweds - may all your dreams come true with the fewest obstacles that can hurt the least but make you the strongest you can ever be.