My Nephew's Wedding

Last month we went to California for my nephew's wedding (one of my triplet nephews). Jeremy & Krystin were married in an orange grove in the mountains! It was beautiful! The weather was perfect and everything was so pretty. You can see the sheer material that draped from the gazebo all the way to the back of the seating area. Instead of the lighting of the unity candle they did a sand ceremony. I had never heard or seen this before but it was very cool! The moms (biological and steps) took up glass vases with different colored sand and handed these to the bride and groom. The minister takes the white sand and says that it represents the Spirit. The black and purple sand (different colors are used at different weddings for this part)represent the bride and groom. The white sand is poured by the minister into a bigger glass vase and then all three are poured (sometimes alternately) into the bigger vase to symbolize the uniting of the three. I thought this was really cool since we are united together not only as husband and wife but with the Spirit too. Very nice alternative to the unity candle. The reception got a little cold but they had outdoor heaters crankin' the whole night.

When we finally got back to our hotel, we had about 4 hours before we had to be up again to catch our flight out of LAX. Needless to say, we were very tired and I'm not so sure we were really ready to go home! California is such a beautiful state (I love the mountains) and the weather can't get much better!!! It actually reminded Tori and me a little of Haiti (as long as we blocked out any sign of civilization)!