I love San Francisco!

The week after the wedding, Mike and I stayed at my sister's house in the SFO area. I met Alyson and Melissa in the afternoon in SFO. We walked up Fillmore Street, which is the Pacific Heights area to do some shopping. It had great stores and it was our lucky day as they were having a cocktail party at Betsey Johnson's with our favorite black cherry Effen vodka. Here is Alyson, modelling one of Betsey's dresses.

I thought this sheep herder vest would be a perfect outfit for Melissa, but she thought it was ridiculous.

The shopping was excellent. For example, if you go there you can buy cute little trinkets like this:

Later we headed to PlumpJack to meet Shelly for a delicious dinner. We thought we would like to live in one of the cute apartments in Pacific Heights like this. Maybe someday...

The Wedding..

Miracle of all miracles, the wedding went off flawlessly. Melissa and I never thought we would make it, but in fact it was perfect. Here are some of my favorite photos from the wedding. Mike took most of them because I was in the wedding.

First off, the bride is escorted down the aisle. Note, my mom made this beautiful wedding dress. Very nice handiwork!

Next, the sisters snuggle up with the bride and our new brother-in-law.

Lanie poses with me and the cake. Although I was the primary cake maker, almost everyone helped out with the cake, so I have to give everyone several credits for helping with the cake. Aunt Helene did the flower decorations, which helped cover the many imperfections! In the end, it was delicious, and we had so much cake left over that we saved to the top 2 layers! The happy couple froze the top layer for their first anniversary. I hope it freezes well!

The happy husband says, "Awesome! I'm married!" Felipe is excited to be married to Lanie.

To top off the night, the bride and groom kick off the dancing.

They had a great band, and we had an excellent time dancing for the rest of the night.

The Preparations..

I arrived in Redwood City,CA on October 2nd, to head down to Texas for my sister's wedding. I was going down 10 days in advance to help prepare - I had three main tasks: to make my bridesmaid's skirt, make my sister's bridesmaid's skirt, and to make the wedding cake. I thought I would have plenty of time...
Luckily, my Mom and other sister arrived the same day I did. So there were three of us down there (besides the bride!) preparing for the wedding. We all worked furiously to get our chores done.

The bride also had a lot of work to do. She made her veil, and here's the bride sewing the ring bearer pillows.







Mom was trapped in the bathroom for two full days working on the flower arrangements. She did almost all of the flowers for the wedding, and the remainder were done by our Aunt.

Melissa silver leafed the cake platter that Dad made. Here are Melissa and Lanie showing off their handiwork. The cake platter subsequently exploded due to unknown complications. Luckily, that happened after the wedding was over!







Melissa arranged the bachelorette party on Thursday night before the wedding. Our target dance floor was the Broken Spoke, a famous two step bar in Austin. Felipe was on call to bring friends down to dance with us. Reliably, he kept his word and showed up with friends in tow. I'm not sure the bride and groom should be dancing at her bachelorette party, but it was nice of him to watch out for us!







The rehearsal and subsequent dinner was on Friday. Here Dad practices walking Lanie down the aisle. Notice her cute matching bag and gloves. We were all frantic about the remaining chores, however, we took a pause to enjoy a mariachi band at a delicious Tex Mex restaurant. The rehearsal party was arranged by Felipe's parents and was a nice break.





After a very late night by all, the bridesmaids went downtown to get our hair done for the wedding. Here's a lovely picture of the bride getting her hair done. And of course, the baby bridesmaid is below.


I still had lots of work to finish on the cake. In fact, I had to assembly the entire cake and decorate it. I was a bit desperate, and everyone was rushing around to help me finish. In fact, I finished it up about ten minutes before the ceremony was about to begin. It seemed like a miracle that we completed the preparations on Saturday, but we did. Next up.. the wedding.