Wedding Extravaganza

We are still recovering from a fun, fun weekend of wedding hoopla. Our babysitter, Eleyna, asked the girls to be her flower girls about a year ago and they have been talking about it ever since. I am happy to report they successfully fulfilled their duties and had a blast doing so. Lots of precious memories are wrapped inside this experience.

On Friday, the girls (and Matt--more on that later) participated in the Vietnamese ceremony. This was held at Eleyna's parents' home and was rich with tradition and culture. It was really neat to experience the customs of the Vietnamese culture, and the bonus just happened to be awesome food. Awesome. The girls wore authentic Vietnamese dresses, brought back from Vietnam by Eleyna's mom last month, and they looked completely precious in them.

This is so Adrienne right now. So, so ornery

With the beautiful bride just before the ceremony

The wedding party

Leading the processional of the groom's family up the street, where they were to wait to be invited into the bride's home (she was inside). 

Here comes the groom--David

Yes, that is Matt in the tan sports jacket, and he is helping to carry a roast pig! The groom has to bring several traditional gifts to the bride's family and one includes a roast pig.

The groomsmen handing off the rest of the gifts to the bridesmaids (a variety of things were inside--cake, fruit, jewelry)

I do not have any pictures of the actual ceremony because we were trying to keep a very squirrely and ornery Adrienne semi-quiet and entertained. From what I could observe from my post in the dining room, the ceremony was very meaningful and emotional. The bride's sister translated and explained each step as we went along. The bride and groom got a chance to speak and thank their parents, and their parents did the same while offering blessings and gifts to them. The ceremony also included Buddhist prayers at the family altar in honor of their ancestors and some incense burning. And then....it was time to party! And they really knew how to party. Eleyna's dad brought out a jar of cobra-infused liquor he brought back from Vietnam. Yes, that is a real cobra and some smaller green snakes inside this jar of funkiness. I did not taste it, because smelling it was enough to confirm I didn't want to do so. But guess who did? Yep, Matt. He took a shot to cheering from the crowd (along with about 5 other people) and confirmed it to be pretty awful.

The famed liquor, notice the bride's dad, Son, grinning in the background.

Successful and fun night, heading back to the car. We made it home about 9:30 and promptly put our little ladies to bed to rest for the next big day.

Not sure how these pics got out of order. Dad and his girls pre-ceremony

Playing with the bride's cousin and new friend, Vin, at the party.

The Howe ladies. Part of the ceremony requirements were that women covered their shoulders for it and wore a long dress.

On Saturday the girls slept until almost 9, which was a relief to me. We tried to keep them in as restful a mode as possible, hence we watched a few shows and a DisneyNature movie.

All rolled up in rollers as they watched a show. I had about a 3 step process to doing their hair to ensure it would stay in place for the duration

At 1 p.m. we took a few pics of these beauties and loaded up to head downtown

Love this!

More sass from #2

Walking with Daddy through the alley behind the hotel

A strange sort of selfie as they walked behind me

We met up with the bridal party and were treated to a limo ride to Quarry Hill park for picture taking. The girls were SO excited. Adrienne requested to take a picture with the "dress up van"

All crammed in. We rode in this limo with the bride's parents, groom's parents, and the aunt/uncle/cousins of the bride. The rest of the bridal party rode in a Hummer stretch limo in front of us.

Modeling their corsages.

The full bridal party

Playing with Vin as we waited for pictures

The only shot we got of the 4 of us taken by someone else that day. I meant to ask the photographer to get one of us...oh well.

Bride and flower girls and their silly faces

See the limos at the end of the path just hanging out?

I'm not gonna lie--the picture taking part was pretty torturous for us. We were there about 90 minutes in a wide open park that just invited the girls to explore and have fun. While that would have been great under normal circumstances, we were doing our best to keep them clean and injury-free.

Hide and seek

Rolling around on the pavement. Sigh.

We made it back to the ceremony site with about 40 minutes to spare, so we all took bathroom breaks, grabbed a snack, and let the girls watch a show on the iPad.

I hope I can obtain a video clip of the girls performing their duties because it was really precious. Jillian was a model flower girl, walking slowly and dropping her petals in an evenly-spaced manner. Adrienne followed behind her and stopped often to drop handfuls of petals before moving on. When she realized she was pretty far behind Jillian, she started to run and then tripped and fell. She did this in the rehearsal and screamed like a madwoman for me. I held my breath and waited for the same to happen, but after she heard everyone exclaim "Awww" when they saw her fall, she looked around, stood up, and then....jumped! She jumped several times and then proceeded to the front to exclaim, "Mom, I did it!!"

After the wedding, running free

Thumbs up, they did it!

Waiting in line for the reception with our friend, Julie

A little sweetness between Dad and A

Grace and Jillian--RAC buddies and reception table mates

Drinking water out of the "fancy glasses"

Ah, fruit punch. It flowed like water at this reception and the girls enjoyed the unrestricted access to such a rare treat.

Smart mom to bring some Color Wonder stuff and stickers. Yay me!

Hittin' the dance floor

J and A tearing it up

Jillian and Grace

The sight of Jillian cutting a rug will be forever etched into my memory. She had a blast dancing and was just happy and independent on the dance floor. She was closely observing everyone's dance moves and just trying them out as she felt moved to do so. 

A and Daddy dancing

This was the scene about 10 p.m. Adrienne passed out in my arms, while Jillian waited and waited (and danced and
danced) for her requested song to come on.

At 11:15, the DJ finally played "Raise Your Glass" (yes, slightly unorthodox choice for a small child, please don't judge) and we convince Jillian who requested to "stay at the party FOREVER" to come home with us. The girls slept until 10:15 on Sunday (!!!!), so I'd say the only bummer of the weekend is that Matt and I couldn't sleep past 7. Oh, the irony of that one. Congrats, Eleyna and David! We were blessed to be a part of such a momentous occasion.