Wedding Weekend Recap, Part One: Ladies’ Night!

Now that I am finally beginning to go through photos and reflect back on last weekend’s amazing whirlwind, I am realizing that recapping the four-day wedding weekend extravaganza is going to take a few blog entries, so brace yourselves, please . . .

You see, although we had a tiny wedding, many of our guests came from out of town—and some even from other continents! Maiki and I camped out at the resort where our out-of-towners were staying so as to maximize catch-up time with our friends. Thus we ended up with a four-day wedding-fest, which, in my opinion, was awesome!

The girls had a little ladies’ night planned for Thursday. Every night seemed to begin with some pre-game action at our casita, and of course Dad had supplied red cups for travelers . . .

The girls went to our fave sushi place in Manhattan Beach.

That’s Belinda, Amanda, Mini Bisc, Ashley, a.k.a. Mrs. Tollakson (who will be running in the Olympic Marathon Trials in 2 weeks!), Tara (29 weeks prego—trooper award!), Emily, me, Linsey, and Aunt Sammy! Missing was poor Mere who had flight drama, but managed to talk her way onto a plane and meet us in time for dessert.

I love this sushi place because they have awesome veggie options: check out the cucumber-wrapped rolls and veggie tempura. Yum! The fish-eaters loved it too!

Me and Aunt Sammy!

Belinda and Amanda, the Australian invasion! I am so appreciative of the long trek they made to come share our special weekend with us.

The Manhattan Beach pier had an awesome Christmas-lights tree on the end of it.

We went to another location for dessert and had our own glass-enclosed room and fire-pit. Pic is blurry but I had to at least try to share this one.

And these hot, fresh donuts were one of our very non-gluten-free desserts. WOW. With that, the weekend of indulgence was underway and we were certainly well-fueled for the upcoming smashfests. Reports on those up next!