It's another rainy weekend in Raleigh! I looked at the forecast earlier in the week and thought, not again! Michael and Fernanda drove up from Fayetteville where Michael is in the service to meet with me about a month ago. She is from Mexico and attending college here and they wanted to get married before Michael is deployed. We set the date of March 28 for a small wedding in my wedding garden with about 20 guests. Her family was coming from Mexico for this special occasion. We created a ceremony then Fernanda translated it into Spanish for their friend, Brenda, to alternate reading with me during the ceremony so all present could follow the ceremony. They also wanted to incorporate the sand ceremony to symbolize their union.
The big day arrived and thankfully it was not raining but the forecast was for severe
thunderstorms later in the afternoon. Fernanda and her family arrived first and we decided on the colors of sand to use. I had some bags of colored sand and she chose blue for Michael as it is his favorite color and white for herself. We got that all set up and ready to go. You can see that I put out a little green rug for the couple to stand on so the bride would not slowly sink into the soft earth with her high heels! Fernanda is such a beautiful woman and, of course, a gorgeous bride. Her heritage is both Mexican and Chinese. She and her father waited inside the house so Michael could not see her until we began. Michael looked so handsome in his dress blue military uniform.
A few of the guests got lost getting here and so we waited for them. In the meantime, Nicholas, our ring bearer, dropped the groom's ring on my deck and it rolled into one of the cracks and disappeared beneath the deck into the muck and debris trapped between the boards and the concrete pad underneath. We searched with a flashlight but could not see it. Nicholas was quite upset as you can imagine. I felt so sorry for him. So, Michael's dad offered his wedding band to use for the ceremony. When all the guests arrived, we proceeded with the ceremony as rain was threatening. Brenda (in red standing next to me) translated the ceremony paragraph by paragraph and we finished in plenty of time without any drops of rain falling. After the cheering and applause for our bride and groom,
now wife and husband, I asked my husband, Dave, to pry up one of the boards on the deck to see if we could find the ring.
And we did! So I had Fernanda place the real wedding ring on Michael's finger saying: "With this ring, I thee wed." As you can tell in the photo, Nicholas was a happy little guy! We returned the substitute wedding band to Michael's father and all was well! Whew!We posed for photographs with all the family members and the happy couple and their families and friends departed to
Vivace to celebrate. About 30 minutes later, the soft rain began. Marty and I are off to the next wedding at the Carolina Inn at 6:30. Thankfully, the wedding has been moved inside to the Hill Ballroom so we will be dry and cozy--see my next post.We bless you this day, Michael and Fernanda!
(A friend of Michael's who is also in the military has arranged for his wedding to be here July 4th, so I hope to see this happy couple again in a few months!)
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