Europe Trip Continued: The Wedding Day!

Ana getting ready at the salon.

Okay, I know, I know - I'm so behind on my Europe posts! I'll get better, I swear! So here it is, the post about the wedding! On Saturday morning all the ladies got up early and made our way to the salon to be thoroughly prepped for the big day. It was so much fun to spend the time together, to laugh and chat and we all had a wonderful time!


All the ladies enjoying a morning of pampering - nails, hair and makeup!


Tia Elisa getting her hair done.


Tia Ecy all ready to go!


Here she is, Ana all ready to go!


Here are all of us girls ready to go!

Then we moved on to the ceremony. After a long nervous time waiting it was time to go!

Doesn't Sergi look blown away! He uttered a simply stunned "Wow!" when Ana came into sight, so sweet!

Here are the happy couple, listening intently to Sergi's sister giving a beautiful speech.



Sergi's sister gave a beautiful speech - which I mostly understood, even though it was in Catalan. Very moving!


A nice photo of us with Eda and Primitivo.


The happy parents with the group from Brazil.

Here's a fun video of the dancing!

Europe Continued: Pan amb Tomaquet, Lost Baggage and the Endless Excitement

The friday night before the big day, the family and all the visitors got together for a nice dinner at Pan amb tomaquet in Vilassar. They didn't have a rehersal dinner like they do here in the states, instead Sergi spent the evening with his family and Ana with hers. Pan amb tomaquet is a nice restaurant in the village where Eda and Primitivo live and we've been there many times before with the family. They had a small lofted area of the restaurant reserved for all of us and we had a terrific time mingling and sharing our excitement over the next day.

Of course, there was some delicious food involved too!

My tortilla and pan con tomate - yum!


Felipe with his pan con tomate and lomo jamon.


Felipe with Ecy and Elisa.


Many friends came for the wedding from Brasil - Eduardo, Bianca, (I can't remember this gentleman's name...I'm working diligently on remembering...), Carolina and Ana in the background.


Eda at the table with Ana Luisa and Bruno - friends from Brasil as well, who you may remember from a previous post (they visited us earlier this year in NYC).


Primitivo and Ernani.


Ana and Primitivo with Primitivo's brother Francisco (Paco) and his wife Mari and their kids Paco, Miguel, and Ana who all came from Zaragoza for the wedding.

After dinner we all headed back home and tried settling in for the night. Let's just say that everyone was a bit hyper over making sure all was ready for the next day and it took quite some time for everyone to wind down. It had been a long day - did I mention that all six guests arriving from Brasil had their luggage lost and that Tia Ecy was "lost" as well for some time - as she missed her connecting flight and no one knew precisely which flight she had been moved to.... well thank goodness that Ecy was found and eventually everyone got their luggage, that is after Eda, Primitivo and Elisa spent about 10 hours in the airport!

Here's Eda and Ana "winding down" before bed...it involved some sort of acting out of an exorcism, which at this time I cannot remember why...


and fake sleeping/laughing:


Sweet dreams for the day to come...

Ana and Sergi: Part One, the Civil Ceremony

Looking ready for a lifetime of wonderful days together!

We arrived to Spain on Wednesday afternoon, and did not do too much - we all had prep to take care of for the upcoming wedding on Saturday. But important not to forget was the small civil wedding ceremony that Ana and Sergi had that Thursday. We all gathered around noon and walked through Vilassar to the Judge's office. There they had a small, very short civil ceremony. I'll admit that while my Spanish is improving, I did not understand much of what was said...but I knew what was going on!


A photo of the couple listening to the judge, families are in the background. I'll admit - this picture is posed! Almost everyone was taking photos the whole time - I think it was a more photo documented ceremony than the Prince of England! So in the end I asked if everyone would mind if I took a pic while everyone was sitting down, and fortunately they all obliged me.

Well then it was time for family photos, and boy did they abound! We held a whole miniature portrait session in that tiny room, thanks to some pretty terrific light. But I think that it was how happy everyone was for Ana and Sergi that made them all look so good!


With Eda and Primitivo, her very proud parents!


With Fina and Joan, Sergi's proud parents!


With Felipe and I.


And then it got silly...


With Sergi's sister Gemma and her husband Francesc and nephew Pau and niece Ariadna.


With Ana and Felipe's Aunt Elisa.

Afterward we went to another small town nearby and had a really wonderful lunch together. The place was called Casa Roura, and was in this very old large mansion/estate. The inside was beautiful and we had a nice private room to dine in. We all had a really terrific time!

The rest of Thursday was spent preparing for the arriving guests the next day, there were six people coming from Brazil, and some other small preparations for Saturday's big event.

¡Felicidades a Los Novios! Congrats to the Newlyweds!

Congratulations to my beautiful sister-in-law Ana and her terrific husband Sergi who were married yesterday! It was a beautiful day, a beautiful couple and a great time with friends and family from around the world. We even danced until three a.m.!

I'm on vacation, with limited wifi, so posts will be infrequent until I get back. I promise it will be with the wait, as posts a from Spain and France (PRis and Avignon) are yet to come :)

La Boda de Javier y Carmen

On Saturday we went to Plasencia for Javier and Carmen's wedding - it was a wonderful drive (as previously blogged) and the town is very beautiful, and the wedding was great.

The wedding took place in la Iglesia de San Nicolas, which was constructed in thirteen century and later reformed in the fourteenth century. It was beautiful!


Afterward the happy couple was greeted outside of the church...

Carmen's dress was beautiful and they're smiles were priceless!

After the wedding we all walked the short distance to the Parador where their reception was held. The Paradors are a chain of luxury hotels throughout Spain that were founded by Alfonso XIII, these are often in old castles, palaces, fortresses, convents, monasteries and other historic buildings. It was a really wonderful place to celebrate, and I would hope that some day I might get to travel around Spain, touring each of the beautiful Paradors.


I've compiled a few photos from around the Hotel....enjoy the views!









The reception was very elegant, and was held in an old room on the upper level of the parador.

They had a wonderful meal with Brocheta de rape y langostinos sobre salsa de pimientos rojos veratos (a rape fish kebab with shellfish and pepper sauce - I had a salad instead due to the allergy), Medallon de solomillo de ternera retinta con salsa de trufas y patatas pera (a beef tenderloin with mushroom red wine sauce and pear shaped potatoes) and ended with a surtido de postres del convento (an assorted desserts of the convent). Super yummy!

Later they had the dancing/party portion of the reception in a cellar located in another part of the parador:


One last photo...they had their photographers taking polaroid photos of all of the guests and then put them into a book for the couple. It was a very nice idea, and our photo turned out quite well :D



Us trying to recreate the polaroid...wasn't quite the same.

Castile-La Mancha, Spain

Saturday morning we left Madrid early to head to Plasencia in Extremadura. The drive, with Gabi and Anna, was quite a nice one. It's pleasant to see an landscape other than the ones you are used to in your own home. Once we were outside of Madrid, the landscape became quite beautiful. This was especially the case when we entered Castile-La Mancha.

We stopped briefly at a small town called Maqueda in La Mancha for breakfast. We pulled over to find a small bar/restaurant called Bar el Castilla (named such for the castle down the road).


The bar/restaurant was small, and only had two customers standing at the bar. We were greeted at the door by a scruffy looking dog, that seemed curious about us visiting.

Went inside and ordered a bit of food for breakfast and some coffees as well.


We had this absolutely delicious Manchego cheese with bread. How awesome it was to have such good food from the region it comes from!

We continued on after breakfast towards Plasencia, but not without seeing the Castle of Maqueda:

This castle apparently dates back to the 15th century and is now the residence of the Guardia Civil (the police basically) and was declared a national historic monument in 1931.

On the road again, we passed by groves of olive trees, herds of sheep, and all of the beautiful countryside. It was interesting to me, and maybe I was just not in the right place....but I saw none of the fabled wind mills from Don Quixote. I did however see, towards the outside of the state a very large collection of solar power panels (several fields worth, thousands of them), and I can't help but wonder how Don Quixote would battle the solar panels if that had been the case so many years ago!

Boda España

So at last we have finished our last installment of the world wide wedding tour! yesterday we got some of the photos from the photographer. It was a lot of fun to celebrate with everyone here in Spain, and we even had some unexpected surprises (i.e. the cake!). This cake...Eda asked us months ago if we would like this special cake presentation that they have here, and we had definitively said that it was not really our style and we prefer not to have it. There was some sort of mix up on the restaurants part and out came the cake in a twirling, artificial flowered clam shell sort of thing...with music blasting and when it opened.....there was smoke! It was the most hideous and fantastic sight I've even seen with a wedding cake. See the video below:


Done to the tune of Whitney Houston's "I have nothing" hahaha....of course not a song we picked!

Eda (Felipe's mom) went to tell the coordinator that we didn't want this and he apologized genuinely and said that at that point there was nothing he could do to stop it....and so it continued!

Here are a few of the photographers photos from the reception as well:

It rained that day, and the rocks were super slippery...kind of scary in my high heels!


Here's what the dinner room looked like, it was very nicely done :D


Cutting the cake with the traditional sword...


Here you can see the awesome smoke they have coming from the "clam shell"


And finally dancing....


And so folks, that's it....no more wedding stuff for Felipe and I...now we can enjoy just being married. See us in about 49 years...and maybe we'll be up to celebrating again :D