1st Wedding Weekend, Part Two

My brother's wedding was on Saturday. Shawn and I ended up sleeping in rather late, so there really wasn't anyone around by the time we got moving. We decided to go back to the beach for an hour or two by ourselves, but when we got there, it was so crowded that we couldn't find a place to park. After driving around for awhile, we finally gave up and went back to the hotel. Shawn worked out in the hotel's super air conditioned fitness center while I hung out at the hotel pool. I had a good system going...get in the pool for a few minutes, get out and lay on the lounge chair until I got dry and hot, then get back in the pool for a few minutes. I also got some reading done.

When I went back up to our room to start getting ready for the wedding, I found my brother panicking in our (mine and Shawn's) room. I'm not 100% sure why, but he was getting dressed for the wedding in there, and there was a problem with his tie. It's a very long story, but the end result was having Shawn drive to a Men's Wearhouse in Wilmington and borrowing another white tie from a display shelf for my brother to wear. I was pretty impressed that MW just trusted that Shawn would return it the next day...they didn't take his credit card info or ID or anything.

We got to the beach (where the ceremony was taking place) around 5:25. The wedding should've started at 6:00. Have I mentioned yet what the temperature was like? Saturday was, of course, the hottest day of the week. The high temperature was supposed to be 98, and I'm positive it went at least that high! It was also very humid. Of course, being on the beach, there was no shade. Fortunately, I had thought to suggest that my dad bring an umbrella to make his own shade (which he did, since he does not do well in the heat), and Leslie's dad thought to bring a cooler full of ice cold water bottles. We did some photos before the ceremony, which ended up being delayed as we waited for a set of Leslie's grandparents to arrive.

By the time the wedding started at 6:30, the sun had actually gone behind some high clouds, and a nice little breeze had picked up. It was actually almost comfortable by then!

Shawn was given the job of videographer, so the few pictures he took of the ceremony were really from the viewpoint of the officiant (who happened to be Leslie's sister). I was given the job of "flower girl wrangler," so while waiting for the ceremony to start, my job was to occupy my niece and do my best to keep her white dress more or less clean. I gave up on keeping her hair looking nice. I was very pleasantly surprised that my niece waited fairly patiently for her turn to walk down the aisle, and once she started, she did a good job. Of course, once she saw her daddy at the front of the aisle, she took off running towards him and stopped throwing flower petals. Once she got down to the front, she threw her last handful of petals at the feet of the officiant, and then proceeded to spike the basket onto the sand. I wish Shawn had gotten a picture of that. :)

The ceremony itself was beautiful. You couldn't have painted a prettier backdrop than the sand dunes with the tall grasses and the ocean just behind them. During the sand ceremony, 3 pelicans flew over the water in front of us...which Leslie's dad pointed out was kind of significant since there were now 3 of them becoming a family.

Here are a bunch of pictures from the ceremony (and getting ready for it). Our camera battery died pretty much as we got to the reception, so we don't have any pictures from there. But it was pretty, too. :)