LA Wedding: Elisabeth and Alex

It was a crazy busy weekend but so much fun! My fam and I all met up in LA (where my brother lives) to celebrate the wedding of Liz and Alex! Since we don't have any family here in the US, we've been going over to Elisabeth's family's house every year for the holidays...that means twelve years of Thanksgivings, Christmases and Easters. Basically I think of them as my fake family- or how my mom prefers it, my California family (she thinks 'fake family' doesn't sound too good).


So being that she is my fake cousin, it was so fun to throw her a bridal shower a few weeks ago to kick off the celebrating. It was my mom's first time hosting in her brand new kitchen (reno was a huge success- looks fantastic!) and my first time co-hosting a bridal shower. I handled invites, decor and set up. My mom handled all the amazing food (Liz's mom Christine made the delish deserts), games, rentals and clean up. It was a success, if I do say so myself, and I had a ton of fun...I mean really, putting me in charge + letting me make everything look pretty = good combo. Some pics from Liz's sister-in-law Mel, the official bridal shower photographer- she did a great job!

After the bridal shower we headed into SF for some celebrating. And by celebrating obviously I mean we just had some lemonade, ate some cookies and went to bed early. No crazy bachelorette party antics up in here...nope no drinking or dancing...just clean, quiet, wholesome fun ;-) Great night with fun girls!

Ok anyways, back to the wedding! My mom and I showed up at the house where they held the reception a little early to help set up <-- again me in charge of making things look pretty? Yes please! Only downside? It was like 100 degrees out and by the time we got in our wedding clothes we were both bright red and covered in sweat..suuuuper attractive. Luckily, that doesn't come across so much in the photos. 

They did the pictures before the ceremony so we had some time to kill (especially since a bad accident AND a fire had totally screwed up traffic- easy fix though to push back the wedding time to give them some time to get there). Time to kill= photo op with my camera. First up my mom, her BFF (aka Liz's mom) and the happy bride.

Then we got down to business- dress shots. We were working on angles to show off how beautiful this dress is...seriously, its a Vera (as in Wang- duh) and so pretty! She also had super cute shoes which I totally want.

The above shot is my fav. But we decided to go a more serious route for the next photo- for those of you familiar with ANTM, this is Tyra's favorite aka The Broke Down Doll...really shows off your collar bones for that sexy emaciated look. I was smiling too much to make this believable however Liz was smizing so its a pretty legit photo.

Soon enough everyone was ready for the wedding. We all headed down to the bluffs for the ceremony. FYI Pacific Palisades is beautiful! Gorgeous site for a wedding and the planes flying overhead to get water to fight the fires, were kind enough not to fly over head during the ceremony. 

After a Quick ceremony (literally since that's now her last name), we headed back to the house for the reception. Out front was the coolest (and quietest) with a nice breeze coming through so some folks stayed out there...bonus? this is where the Ben and Jerry's guy set up....my Dad was pretty stoked about his pre-dinner ice cream cone. The back had the tacos, drinks, photo booth, a super awesome tree house (I want one so bad- tree houses are the coolest!) and the patio/dance floor. Speaking of tacos, they were soooooo good! Those guys were awesome, totally friendly, fast turn around on the food AND they were all over helping us keep things clean...I'll update with their name as soon as I find out what it was (totally drawing a blank).

In addition to taco and ice cream goodness, there were also yummy cookies, lemon drop favors (mmm) and Christine made two kinds of wedding cake for Liz- yummmm!!! Obviously I needed to test them both out and they were delicious...so delicious that I was desperate to try them both and completely forgot to take a picture of them.

After all that eating we worked off a few calories by dancing up a storm. I taught little Cooper how to fist pump Jersey Shore style...although his fist was more of a duck shape...more appropriate for a preschooler. We also got a circle of people showing off their Gangnam style dance moves to the crowd...obviously they were very impressed by our ability to master such an intricate dance ;-). It was quite a night and I crashed as soon as we got back to the hotel. Why? because I had to save my energy to check something off my list...DISNEYLAND!!!