Wedding Weekend

This weekend my 1 and only boy (first) cousin got married.

So, the family has gained another girl - and what a wonderful girl she is! We all LOVE Stephanie. Not only does she fit in SO well with the family, but she completes Jimmy. I have always wondered what kind of woman it would take to be good enough for our Jimmy - Stephanie is even better than I pictured! Anyway, on to the festivities!!

The wedding itself was a small, simple affair, with just the parents, someone videotaping the event, photographers, and minister. It was perfect for Jimmy and Stephanie.

After the wedding there was a small reception with family and a couple super close friends.

Here I am with the bouquet that I caught. Looks like I'll be the next one...October looks like a good month ;-)

Here are the bride and groom (Stephanie and Jimmy). What a look Jimmy!



Cutting the cake - they had no clue what they were doing, but ended up doing a beautiful job.


Squish or nice??
Nice!

Wedding Weekend Continued

This is right after feeding each other cake.

For fun, and in honor of Jimmy being born in Spain, they also cut the cake with a Spanish sword. So, FUN!

Here's Jimmy cleaning it off after the cutting - isn't it an impressive sword?
After the cake cutting I asked them to kiss, so I could have one to send to Bonnie - they were too quick for my camera.
Try again - slower...so they exaggerated the kiss - very funny guys!Give me a real one! There we go - that's more like it...ok you can stop now...umm guys...guys??
Toast time!

Antonio kept talking...even after giving the toast! I think he was giving instructions on some dancing we were going to do. Thankfully, the music didn't work, so we got out of it!!

Wedding Weekend Continued

After the reception, the family all went up to the "cabin" up in Estes Park that is owned by the owner of the company I work for. He kindly let's employees stay for free. It is a WONDERFUL retreat place and is very aptly named the Beit Shalom - the House of Peace. I say "cabin" because it is HUGE. 5 bedrooms (plus pullout couches), 6 bathrooms, a study/loft, living room, rec room, kitchen, dinning area - the house just seems to go on and on! We fit 13 people with relative comfort. And the views are AMAZING! Unfortunetly, the clouds covered most of the mountains through the weekend - but even so, look at these pictures...

Uncle Jim and Jill spent several hours cloistered in the study/loft (Uncle Jim posting about the wedding on his blog and Jill writing a paper for school) - aren't the cute with the same look of deep concentration?
We had a wonderful time just sitting around and talking.
I love this photo of Antonio leading his family in prayer as they basic in God's creation.

More mountains

Jill brought her dulcimer. Here's her playing while enjoying the view out the living room (floor to ceiling) windows. Can you see the mountains in the background?

More chatting.

Wedding Weekend Continued

Stefan and Jimmy both enjoyed playing along with Jill with their various instruments.

A good portion of the weekend was taken up playing Guitar Hero on X-Box. It was rather amusing to watch.

Stephanie's mom tried her hand at it - she was VERY good! She had graduated up to medium by the end of the day on Saturday. This is especially amazing to me because I have absolutely no talent for the game!
We had a beautiful, mini snow storm on Saturday afternoon. Here are a couple of views from the downstairs balcony - can you see the snow flakes?


And since it's Colorado, where you wait 10 minutes and the weather changes, the skies cleared while I was out taking pictures.
Meanwhile, back inside, a crowd was developing to watch the gamers (Antonio, Uncle Jim, Stefan).

Wedding Weekend Continued

When we weren't playing Guitar Hero, we played DDR (Dance Dance Revolution).Here's Jimmy playing. The funny thing about Jimmy and DDR, is that he bounces the ENTIRE time the song is going. It is SO funny. It looks quite a bit like River Dance :-)
Here's Steph gettin' her groove on with DDR. She's rather good!

When we weren't playing Guitar Hero or DDR, we were eating! Because, let's face it, it wouldn't be a family gathering if there wasn't TONS of food. A BIG HUGE thank you goes out to Aunt Kathy for organizing the majority of the food. It was YUMMY!!!

Here's Jimmy with his new father grillin' up some burgers and beer brots.

Here's the bride with her 2 alcoholic beverages - she teasly said they were to help her cope with being married to Jimmy (don't worry, the other bottle in the picture was mine).

We then turned around to find Jimmy with 2 drinks in his hands! A laugh was shared by all :-)

Here are a couple of pictures of us around the table eating. Did I mention the food was AWESOME?

Jimmy, Jill and Stefan serenaded us with some lovely Irish music Sunday morning.



And that's where our story ends. Hope you enjoyed walking through the weekend!