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.