Making it legal

The wedding started at noon, first with the official part at the "city hall." The ladies who work there were extremely cute in decorating the place with fresh jasmine flowers and leaves. Mostly the ceremony was the ladies reciting lots of poetry about love and their keyboardist playing schmoozy songs and singing about love. For me, a bit much. The moms were crying so it must've been good. :) We got to officially thank our parents with flowers as part of the ceremony, which was nice. The ceremony was also quite official with several signatures (both old and new names) in several places and an official reading of each line of our marriage license. (Point of interest - Latvian women have a different ending on their name than men, so while Karlis is Briedis, I am officially Briede. I have yet to see what the US embassy says about this, when I go in to apply for a new passport. I'm sure this could be a whole new bundle of fun with red tape.)

Our witnesses for the marriage were also our vedeju paris - a couple which we chose as "role models" in marriage because we value their relationship and family life - RF and VF from Sweden (also sometimes our Ben and Jerry's suppliers!) who just celebrated their 16th wedding anniversary. :)







A favorite moment was at the end of the ceremony, when all the guests could come up and congratulate us personally. When KB's godson (nearly two years old) came up he looked at us and just said "ALUS!" (beer). We're pretty sure he didn't know what he was saying, but priceless, anyway.... :)