Auntie Pi's Wedding

On Labor Day weekend we headed back to California for yet another celebration. This time it was Auntie Pi's big day. It was a great opportunity to shower Alicia with love and affection and showcase how much we care about and are happy for her. So often she is the one spoiling those around her, so it was good to be able to turn the tables. Or at least we tried. But Alicia and Bill managed to put on quite a party.

To give you an idea of what we experienced, here are Lauren and Sarah standing in front of the castle that was the backdrop for the wedding ceremony. And this was a true castle, moat and all. In fact, all the bridesmaids, and of course the bride herself, arrived at the ceremony via horse and carriage.


Here we see the bride pictured with part of her "rainbow ladies" as she called them. The rainbow was a reference to her bridesmaids and flower girl, who all wore different colored and styled dresses. Yes, Sarah was in fact the flower girl, which was probably a little payback for Alicia playing that same role at our wedding.



The ceremony was wonderful, the company was fun, and food was pretty darn good. However, one of the highlights of the dinner was Auntie D's toast to the bride. She did a fabulous job - she captured Alicia's competitiveness, generosity, and good humor all in a toast that people who knew Alicia could appreciate and people who didn't know her as well could enjoy. Auntie D is certainly a professional.

Speaking of Alicia's generosity, only Alicia would figure out a good way to celebrate the birthday of her guests at the rehearsal dinner, including a huge birthday cake and gifts. And the gifts didn't stop there. She doled out "Pi's favorite things" themed gift baskets to every member of her bridal party. The gift baskets could probably be mistaken for ones given out to presenters at the Grammys, Oscars, or Tonys. Little does she know that none of us needed a gift of appreciation from her - being a part of her special day was more than enough.


Oh right, there was also a groom involved in this wedding. Here we see Bill and Alicia greeting their guests as they prepared to leave the reception. But no, the party wasn't over. They were just leading us all to an after hours party in downtown Paso Robles. The night was truly only beginning. Good thing that Alicia put Aleve in all of the welcome baskets we found in our hotel rooms. I guarantee that this was one of the most widely used items that weekend.


We did tell you that the bride and bridesmaids arrived in a horse and carriage. We may not have mentioned that they stuck around throughout the evening to provide romantic tours of the winery throughout the evening. We decided to share the romance with Lauren and JP.



Honestly, the props throughout the castle were hilarious. There was no way you could leave them alone. They demanded to be photographed.

For example, you couldn't just walk by this medieval device without sticking your head and arms through. In fact, it is important to note that Sarah had this picture taken the moment she arrived at the castle, which means it was two hours before the wedding ceremony. Hopefully you can see the hair and makeup done earlier that day for the occasion. This picture is a keeper, that's for sure.


John was not going to escape the shenanigans that night and was able to join the fun. Here we see pure royalty. As we are looking at these pictures something is becoming more obvious to us. It was our first weekend without kids in a long time. The irony is that without the kids present we apparently needed to act somewhat less than our age. A good time was had by all.




As the wedding weekend drew to a close we headed back to Los Angeles to check on the girls. Auntie D couldn't resist a visit to see how much they have grown in the month since she had seen them last. She especially had fun playing with Reese and watching her show off her crawling and climbing abilities. Callie and Reese are so lucky to have so many aunties in California who love them.

And that brings us to the folks who made all of the above fun possible. While we celebrated the big day up in Paso Robles, Callie and Reese spent the weekend with Auntie Gret, Uncle Scotty, and Josh. By all accounts they had a wonderful time together and it was great for us to know the girls were in good hands.



As crazy as it sounds, with this post we have completed our summer travels. We've had a lot of fun over the past several months, but it went by so fast it's ridiculous. Now we get a two month break before the family heads to Sacramento for Thanksgiving. Surely we'lll be up to a few things here or there between now and then.