Wednesday, October 13, 2004

True Tales of a South Texas Bridesmaid


No blog for a long time because I was away from a computer all last week, and have spent this week catching up at work from being gone last week.


My cousin Twinkie #2 got married last weekend in Uvalde, TX. I was one of eleven bridedmaids (4 junior, 7 senior), arranged at the altar by height. The only reason I wasn't in the VERY back of the line was that I was a senior bridesmaid, and the junior bridesmaids had to line up behind the senior bridesmaids. But they were all (ages 12,13,14) taller than me. grr. grr. I was, thanksfully, taller than the flower girl.


I flew into Austin Tuesday. Mom picked me up at the airport and we drove straight to Uvalde (about 3 hours). We had a nice time chatting in the car. I managed to get my workout in Tue, Wed, and Thursday. After that, all bets were off.


In spite of the title of this blog, it was a really pretty, tasteful wedding. But boy, was it a lot of work. There was quite enough to do with wedding preparations anyway (flowers, dresses, various tuille-wrapped thingies, glue-guns and ribbon) but on top of it all, we spent several days just cleaning my cousin's house and yard. I was not expecting this kind of wedding preparation, and with 3 dogs and somewhere around 20 cats in the house, it was no easy job. But she wanted the wedding reception at her house... (next time I will offer to pay for a reception hall)


Around 150 guests came to the wedding, most of them from our family. Tony flew in Thursday night (we picked him up in San Antonio) and was put to work first thing Friday morning, and had work to do up until the end. Various wedding praparation things, mostly. He was also Mr Catering, being responsible for picking up and setting up the food at the rehersal dinner Friday as well as the appetizer table at the reception. We cut up several coolers-full of cheese, fruit, and veggies. After the ceremony, he rushed back to the house, loaded up all the food onto a 3-tiered platter, set out dip, toothpicks, napkins, plates, etc. and then kept the platter replinished throughout the evening. Too bad nobody tipped. :D


In side news, dad raced in the Texas state road race championships Saturday and took 2nd place-- not bad for a guy who had prostate surgery just last June! The only guy who could beat him was a fellow who got 2nd place in the nationals last year.


Sunday, our flight home was out of San Antonio at around 7pm, so we had all day to play around. We helped a little with the cleanup, but I wanted to have some fun time as well, so dad, Tony and I drove in to SA and spent the day at the Riverwalk. We had a terrific time and just chatted over coffee for several hours.


We had some delays on our flight home, but nothing too bad, got home around 2am, slept late Monday, and I've been trying to catch up at work since.


In more news-- Someone Might Be Interested In The House......shhhhhhh.....can't count my chickens before they hatch.......

I'll keep you posted. Light a candle and say an Ave for the house to sell!

3 comments:

PartnerInCrime said...

Since when does wedding party = free labor? Not sure I would've been too thrilled about that.
How did the china-girl dresses turn out?

Alphagal said...

The dresses were soooooo pretty. All were different colors, except the Jr B's who were all in gold dresses. The bride's gown was also a chinese-style dress, with a gorgeous sheer silk robe-like coat over it. It was just amazing. She carried a long sheath of white calla lilies, and we each carried a bouquet of 4 white irises, so the white flowers tied it all together. One of the bridesmaids is a jewelry maker, so she made all of us earrings to go with the dresses. They looked like tiny little crystal chandeliers. I know that just made them sound tacky, but they really were nice.
Those shoes were so-comfy! We wore those chinese slides like T (oops- cosmopolitan) found in Manhattan, except ours were black.

Alphagal said...

Oh-- when I said "next time I will offer to pay for a reception hall" I did NOT mean to imply that there will be a "next time" for this cousin! The guy she married is such a keeper, and of course, she's a keeper, so I don't foresee anything but happiness for them. I realized later that it sounded like I expected her to have another wedding. What I really meant was "if I knew then what I know now, I'd have offered...."