alive and well....smiling and happy.... :)

I'm back! The treehouse hotel checked out its guests early last Friday morning (my parents, sister and brother-in-law) with tearful goodbyes and so far it has been a slow recovery process. Mima finally started talking to us again two days ago (and when she did start talking, boy, did she start talking)... In one sentence or less: the wedding day was absolutely wonderful! While the preparation was a bit stressful and the "clean-up" (both physical and emotional) has been tiring, we are filled with beautiful memories to last a lifetime.

So obviously, I've got a lot of catching up to do and lots to say about all of it - I'm going to hop around a bit about the last couple of weeks. Today was the first day that I finally had a chance to begin looking at and sorting through all of the wedding pictures that have been downloaded onto Speedy (my computer) and there are a lot! That being said, I have decided to post about the wedding in chapters. Each day (or every couple of days - but I will aim for every day!) I will post a few more pics and write a bit more about the wedding day.

(Briefly, I did not actually fall off the face of the earth this last week. Friday, we did "take the day off" and go to the beach after everyone left, which was a nice day of relaxation. Saturday we became godparents again! This would be a whole blog in and of itself if life were not so busy - the president himself was at the event, as well as some big singer from Italy, which got us in all the newspapers, magazines and on TV that day. My brief commentary of the day includes: the Lutheran church in Latvia scares me, the president has a frighteningly weak handshake for being the leader of a country, lots of money can get you lots in Latvia, and the best moment of the day was when we kidnapped our godson away to buy him an ice cream! On Sunday we attempted to clean the apartment while watching the seven hour parade opening the Latvian Song and Dance Festival on TV. This week we have been working 10 hour days helping our friends by working their booth at an artisans' market. Fun people watching, but also tiring all the same. In other news, Ojarins, our batmobile, got a window knocked out and four lawn chairs were stolen. He was at the car hospital and is better now.)

So....to the wedding day! Only two pictures today, to get us started. The first picture is of KB presenting me with the flower bouquet, as is traditional here. Pretty funny story how that all happened. This is all part of me being the untraditional bride. It all started the night before around 10pm, when a friend of ours called and talked about how the day had been quite stressful for his wife because she hadn't been able to get to her usual mani/pedicurist and someone else had to do her nails for the wedding. At that point I looked down and realized I better do something about my own nails! Then I also started thinking about the fact that I hadn't really tried on any underwear and wasn't sure if I even owned a pair that would show through on a white dress, and I also dug out an old pair of tights that would pass (I decided I needed tights to cover up my bug-bitten legs). Possibly too much info, but this just goes to show my laid back attitude (possibly too laid back?) about the day. I actually appreciated it, as did many guests who commented that they liked the relaxed and down-to-earth feel of the day. I digress....so along with the laid-backness, I called IG around 9am the morning of the wedding, having realized that I didn't even think about getting a bouquet, and asked how necessary this was for the civil part of the ceremony. She said, yeah, I probably need one, so I asked her to pick one out for me. When we arrived at the "city hall" she secretly showed me the bouquet, asked if it would be ok, but couldn't give it to me because KB was supposed to do that. He didn't know about this either, so it was a surprise to him when he pulled up a few minutes later. Here is the ceremonial presentation of the bouquet!

And this is me with the beautiful bouquet. Please note the great necklace! This is how Krixba saved the day! She coordinated the outfit that day through the jewelry so that the white dress, gold shoes, silver wedding ring and bronze jewelry all made sense. Untraditional, I say, and it was just right for us... :)