Amy's Wedding Day!

I knew it would be a whirlwind visit to Las Vegas, and it was! I flew down there Friday night, rented a car, and arrived at Amy's place around midnight. Jenn stayed up after everyone else went to sleep just to let me in. Thank you Jenn!

Saturday morning started sometime before 6AM. The details are a bit blurry for the first 10 minutes or so, but the excitement was catching. How many friends does it take to get one bride ready for an 8AM wedding? One, plus three to sit around chatting and giggling and taking pictures! Emily did a fabulous job curling Amy's hair, and Jenn, Anna and I were the other three.


Then the groom arrived, dug in the closet for his shoes (good thing he found them), and chivalrously carried the dress while escorting his bride to the car.


It was a beautiful day at the temple, inside and out. A quote that stuck with me was the last two lines of:
Boys flying kites haul in their white winged birds;
You can't do that way when you're flying words.
"Careful with fire," is good advice we know
"Careful with words," is ten times doubly so.
Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead;
But God Himself can't kill them when they're said.
As far as I can tell, the quote is from Will Carleton, The First Settler’s Story. There are various versions of it on the Internet, so some of the words may not be exactly correct.

We all headed outside to wait for the newly married couple. Here's people waiting and getting ready for all the picture-taking:


Then the newlyweds appeared and the picture taking began! They obligingly posed for all the cameras.


After the first flurry of photos, the wedding party moved on to another location on the temple grounds for more pictures. I didn't try to duplicate all of the shots the wedding photographer was doing - but here's some of the pictures I did take:


Isn't she a lovely bride in a lovely dress? And the bridesmaids dresses are really sparkly fabric, just like princesses. Here's a closeup of the three bouquets the sisters are holding all together:


Amy was smart - she planned for a snack break. She tried to hide from pictures while eating, but we couldn't let that happen, could we? She shared with Jared too.


Then they went off to get more pictures taken by themselves. Next we went to the luncheon (we were hungry and it was really good - hit the spot! Thank you to Jared's family!), and then we headed for the Strip. It was a lot of walking, and a big contrast to the beautiful, clean temple. But we had fun watching the Bellagio fountains, walking through the Bellagio gardens, and visiting the four-story M&M World store. We bought Icee's to cool ourselves off - the day was bright and sunny at this point and we were boiling!


I didn't take many pictures the the reception - we (the four girls) kept pretty busy helping out. Amy credits her sister Bonnie with most of the actual hard work of planning and figuring things out for the reception - she did a fabulous job! There was the cutest ice cream bar with tons of toppings - chocolate, caramel, and jolly rancher sauces, crushed snickers, butterfingers, oreos, and heath bars, mixed berries and strawberries, gummy bears, sprinkles, and whipped cream at least. And then the bride and groom cut the cake. The outer layer of frosting was pretty thick, so they had to try twice to find the actual cake. :) Then the call went out for volunteers to serve the cake. The four of us stepped up, although we were a bit nervous. Lots of cake got eaten up. Here's the remains when we were through serving cake (note the really thick custard filling layers which made it difficult to cut!):


There were the traditional first dances, and then a last chance for everyone to wish Amy and Jared congratulations as they got ready to head out to door, only to find this:


And then they were gone.

HAPPY WEDDING AMY AND JARED!