San Francisco Trip Days 6 and 7: The Wedding (actually in Livermore) and Aftermath


Scarlett On Dad's Shoulders

The wedding day went the way these things always go. If you’re not involved you’re spending most of the day waiting around until it’s time to get your nice clothes on and go to enjoy the wedding. I went to get In-N-Out Burger for lunch and learned that Scarlett really, really likes french fries.

Scarlett enjoys some In-N-Out Burger Fries

There were various shenanigans going on like Dan, the groom, getting his hair touched up with clippers on the balcony. As I was getting ready to go, Danielle said she wanted to get a photo of Scarlett with the groomsmen. So I went to their room and, within a minute of entering, the father of the bride enters. Apparently, something has gone slightly wrong with the planning and the bride has no way to get to the wedding venue. Well, I had my rental car so I offered to drive her to Casa Real. I got to do something important during the wedding and feel like a hero!

On the way out we saw the groomsmen on the balcony. They teased that Dan had run off.

And we were off:

Dina in the car to the Wedding

The Bride Arrives at the Wedding Location 2

I got back, finished getting dressed, and headed back to Casa Real with Danielle and Scarlett in tow.

My Family at the Wedding

Wedding Sign

The bride and groom took photos before the wedding so I just hung out, took photos of them, and took turns with Danielle watching Scarlett.

Fixing Marlene's Dress

Scarlett and Grandparents at Wedding 3

Bride and Groom's Mothers

Scarlett and Danielle at the Chapel

Ready for their second kid to get married

Eventually it’s finally time for the wedding. There was a trio of strings playing the music.

Playing for the Wedding

I wasn’t really able to pay too much attention to the wedding itself since I spent all my time keeping Scarlett entertained so she would behave. That basically involved feeding her yogurt melts until the wedding was just about done – when she ran out of melts. Then she sat on my lap and played peek-a-boo with Lan.

Ready for the wedding

In fact, Lan and Nam were my entertainment during the wedding. Lan was a flower girl. She’s not quite 2.5 years old so they wisely had her join her parents rather than stay up in front of the church. But that didn’t keep her from wandering around in her row, in front of me, and even walking up to the wedding party.

AH!

My favorite part was when I told her to shush (putting my finger up to my lips). Then she went to one of the groomsmen and, when he looked at her, she told him to shush. And Nam, when he was walking up the aisle, ran the last few feet to headbutt one of the groomsmen. Because of his height it happened to be in the groin. Luckily they saw it coming and no injuries were sustained.

Anh Dat's Family at the Wedding

"HI"

Then it was cocktail hour time.

Marlene's Mermaid-cut Dress

Groomsmen

Groomsmen Lifting Marlene

They had us enter and what came next was one of the funniest, well choreographed entrances I’ve seen at a wedding:

Followed by Dan’s first dance with Marlene:

Bride and Groom's First Dance 3

And you know how these things go. When I wasn’t snapping photos I was walking around holding Scarlett’s hand as she walked through the dance floor following the other kids.

Wedding Cake

Brian gave a great best man speech. What Danielle and I didn’t know when we picked him up from the airport the day before was that he was workshopping some of his best man speech with us. He just couched it as normal conversation, but I’d say that we ended up hearing about 75% of the speech from him without knowing it. I’m sure our laughter and other responses in the car gave him confidence that he had a winner on his hands.

I also saw this kid with this crazy, crazy bib.

Crazy Bib

There was cake, of course.

Wedding Cake

and a dollar dance. The money was to help pay for the honeymoon.

Dollar Dance with his Sisters 3

Covered in Money

There was crazy little kid dancing:

Nam Dancing

And I don’t have the video, but around 2100 PST Scarlett seemed like she was ready to sleep. So I put her in her stroller and started rolling her around. A conga line formed behind me (which was awesome). When we finished she was dead asleep and remained so until the next morning.

Dance Floor

The next day we waited for everyone to wake up.

Walking through the hallway

And we all had breakfast together.

The Day After

Parents the Day After

Then everyone from New York headed out to fly back. We’d given ourselves an extra day since we had Scarlett (which made packing take a bit longer) so we just hung out in Livermore.

Out for a Walk

California Cherry Blossoms

For dinner we met up with Dave and Kendra at Casa Orozco. It wasn’t the worst food, but I wish we’d had just gone back to Dimitri’s Taverna. The following day we drove back to SFO and flew home. Once again, Scarlett was perfect on the plane. She got a little pissy around naptime, but never cried or yelled.


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