Oops, a very delayed wedding recap

Whoopsies, I ended my last post with “be back tomorrow to recap the wedding!”, and that was…. 8 days ago. 😆

The short version of our Mexico trip is that it was essentially a 4 day long PARTY. Haha. It was a bit intense!! And also very fun. But I didn’t have too much alone time, and when I did, either the internet was spotty or I just felt tired and not like posting.

We got home late Monday night (12:30 a.m. arrival to our house) and then we both worked right away on Tuesday morning because we are gluttons for punishment (i.e. I am trying to stretch my work vacation days to cover TOO many vacations this year!!!!).

This work week was also very intense (both in general workload and meeting load) and I irritatingly had very-beginning-of-day meetings every single day. ARGH.

All this to say, it’s been quite a bit and margin has been slim. So, I took an unplanned and unannounced blogging hiatus. Right smack in the middle of NaBloPoMo. 😅 Ah, I suck. Sorry!!

Anyway, let’s recap the main event of the trip- THE WEDDING!

I left off here, with the morning/ prep day recap. It was a nice chill morning (for us, anyway).

The wedding was at 4 pm, so we left the house around 3:30. It wasn’t too far to the church.

Outside in the morning, they had hung the traditional floral star arrangement on the bride’s house:

Here we are, all dressed and ready to go! I loved this rustic wall just outside their house.

I snapped a few photos as the bride came downstairs, all ready and just beautiful looking!

Aren’t her veil and train stunning??

This photo below is my FAVORITE one. I took it on my phone as she was headed out the door, and I swear I feel like it’s professional level! haha.

The wedding was being held at a gorgeous basilica in nearby La Piedad. (Their house is in a tiny colonia, basically, just a few miles from the larger town.)

The city center was very festive and I liked these colorful flags.

It was a little chaotic upon arrival because of course we were running a few minutes late… (the bride had gotten a separate ride so she was there on time!). There just seemed to be the usual last-minute scrambling (NOT from me, I was perfectly ready and standing out by the car waiting!!) to get out the door….

Ivan and I, as part of the wedding (the padrinos de arras), had to line up at the entrance to actually walk down the aisle (behind the groom and his mom, and the other pairs of padrinos).

The wedding itself was very pretty. A little dull, in my opinion, as there was no optional music really of any kind like I’m used to in weddings here. Also, the older priest sort of mumbled, quietly (and with a poor audio system) throughout the whole mass and I could only understand probably like 20% of what he said. I was feeling really down on myself, like, gosh, I’ve been speaking Spanish for all these years, why do I still have trouble understanding in some situations?! But then after the wedding, MULTIPLE people, including the bride!, were like omg I could barely understand anything the priest was saying!! 🤣🤣 So, at least it wasn’t just me! (In truth, I do still struggle to comprehend sometimes when people aren’t talking directly to me. It’s really weird. In a regular conversation, I literally understand 100% of what someone says to me in Spanish. But if it’s on the radio, TV or like over a microphone (especially if the audio isn’t clear or there’s background noise), it can be so much harder! Auditory has definitely always been my weakest sense. I’m a much more visual person (and I can speak totally fluently).)

We had front row seats, so I was able to sneak a few good pics!

I don’t have any pictures from when we had to go up on the altar and present them with the arras (coins). Hopefully eventually we’ll get some copies of the professional photos!

I love this pic of them exiting the church! If only I could delete all the other phones from my photo.. ha.

Post-wedding selfie:

The beautiful bride!

This photo was taken outside the reception hall:

The bride and groom were taking photos in this back garden area, and we, along with the bride’s parents, were called over to take some pictures with them. Well. All of a sudden, I guess since it was dusk?, mosquitoes came out in FULL FORCE. So far on this trip I had not seen a single mosquito, and all of a sudden, they were everywhere. I had never seen anything like it in my life. They were so bad at one point Ivan had like 7 all over his face!!!! It was absolutely awful. Everyone was hopping around and swatting and my skin is crawling right now just thinking of it.

I felt terrible for the bride and groom (and the photographers!), who had to try and stand still for their pictures. The next day the bride’s arms were completely covered in bug bites!

I managed to take this picture, we stood up there bravely for about 2.5 seconds and got our picture taken with them, and then I literally sprinted for the reception hall. 😬

Thankfully, the mosquitoes did not follow us inside.

As soon as we got to our table and I was about to sit down, I suddenly felt something weird on my shoe. I looked down and my shoe had broken!!! 😩I don’t have the best picture, but there’s this little strap around my ankle that connects to the loop on the heel. The loop had somehow come undone, so I had the strap around my ankle but it wasn’t attached to anything! Without it, I couldn’t even walk in the shoe. THANKFULLY Ivan is quite resourceful and he talked to the staff and tracked down some safety pins. He was able to pin the loop back together so I could re-attach the ankle strap. Crisis averted!

The head table. So pretty!

The bride and groom did a fun entrance:

It was quite dramatic! Fireworks went off and everything. (Yes, indoors… Mexicans like their pyrotechnics…).

Table scenery:

It wasn’t a particularly large wedding, actually – I think maybe 100-125 guests? A nice size, though.

After dinner, it turned into a F-I-E-S-T-A. To the max!! They kept joking that people in Michoacán know how to party, and they weren’t joking. (Actually, a majority of the partiers were the groom’s friends, from Mexico City, not Michoacán… ha.)

The groom + his buddies kept running around all night pouring tequila into people’s mouths. 😳 (And, intermittently/ frequently, their own.)

Um, yeah, that’s a pass for me. Haha. I drank 2 Palomas (tequila + grapefruit soda) and called it good.

Ivan mostly just drank a couple beers although they got him with the tequila a couple times too. 😉 Ha.

One thing that had me freaking out was the candles. In front of the head table they had these pretty candle votives. There were a bunch of them. It looked very nice. However, they never extinguished them before the dance. And during the dance part, the crowd kept doing the thing where everyone makes a big circle and then 1-2 people would dance in the middle.

Well, the circle kept getting bigger… and bigger… and women in long, swaying dresses, kept backing up and up… right in front of the candles. Ivan and I were seated just off to the side (from where I took the photo below), so I had a good view.

Oh my gosh, you guys. I had to rush up THREE different times to frantically grab women’s arms and spin them around to show them how close they were to swishing their gown right into the flames!! They all thanked me profusely and were like, “Omg I didn’t even realize open candles were right behind me!”

Seriously, why are there open flames on a dance floor?!?!

Here’s the bride doing the bouquet toss:

(I also had an issue with this. This chair was not the sturdiest, and no one was standing next to her to like, spot her! Her gown and train were pretty long and would be easy to get tangled up in. To me this looked like one big accident waiting to happen. I kept whispering to Ivan, “Why am I the only one noticing all the dangers?!?” 😅🤷‍♀️)

Anyway, everyone emerged unscathed, phew, and the party was really fun. We even danced! They had a DJ for part of it and then a (VERY LOUD) live “norteño” band with trumpets and tubas and the whole shebang.

The reception ended after 1 a.m. and then a bunch of people/ family went back to the house for an “after party…..”. I rallied as long as I physically could and finally went into bed around 3:30 a.m. 😆 If there’s one thing that can be said about Mexicans, it’s that they sure know how to have a good time. 😁

Stay tuned- the parties aren’t over! lol! We still had 2 more full days of fun times in Mexico. Hopefully I’ll be back sooner than next week. 😉

(Here’s a bonus pic that I just stole from the bride’s mom’s FB post…. SO beautiful!)