Evan & Linda's Wedding

Hello everyone! This is Lorraine with the Wedding News Blast! (For those of you who don’t know – we left the park for four days and celebrated our son Evan’s wedding in Laguna Niguel, CA, the week-end of June 13^th. So, the only animals you’ll see in these pictures will be party animals.)

I’m going to do my best to be brief but it will be hard because everything about this wedding week-end was beautifully perfect as far as we were concerned. The only thing that would have made it better would have been having more of our great friends and family there with us.

We flew out of Bozeman, MT, early Thursday morning, the 11^th, arriving in Laguna Niguel about noon. Now…….if you want to talk about culture shock, this would be it! From the wilderness of Yellowstone (bears, bison and bluejeans) to the wild life of Orange County, CA (money, money and money), it was definitely a rapid mental adjustment, and change of clothes, for us.

The pictures tell the story. They go along in order, starting with a most fun visit with our wonderful grandson, Jake, and his dad, David, and ending with the big event – beautiful weather, beautiful setting, beautiful bride and groom. What more could you ask?

Thursday afternoon we visited at the hotel with the happy couple and our good friends Phyllis Kramer and Jerry Skinner who came from Aurora, IL. (Jerry took the picture.)

On Friday evening, about 50 people, who came from all over the U.S., gathered to have fun at the rehearsal dinner at the Salt Creek Grill in Dana Point. It was a big wedding party, 15 attendants total for the bride and groom. There was a lot of love in that room that night.

First we have Linda’s grandparents, her mom and me. The 2 dads, Doug and David Hernandez, were off taking pictures.

You’ll recognize Connie and Bruce Holmes, Phyllis and Jerry and David and Brooke in this photo.

Here are some of the groomsmen and their wives.

There was time for gifts and loving words for the attendants.

We had time on Saturday to enjoy a leisurely breakfast at the hotel with David and Brooke and Phyllis and Jerry. Then, while the two young ones lounged around the pool, the four of us headed to Balboa Island where all the tropical flowers were blooming with abandon, especially my favorite, the glorious bougainvillea.

The wedding, at 5:30 Saturday afternoon, was at Soka University, a Japanese university very near where Evan and Linda live. The ceremony was outdoors on the terraced steps in front of the fountain; the reception was in the rotunda which is a museum. The large reflecting pool with fountains was traversed by 2 long sidewalks where all the processing and recessing happened. Not visible here are the gorgeous purple bloomed Jacaranda trees which provided a backdrop for the pool. Lovely.

The next 23 photos are pretty much self-explanatory and worth a thousand words. In addition to the 2 main characters and Doug and me, you’ll see

• Linda’s very attractive, happy parents smiling for the camera as they danced,
• Bud and Nancy Langworthy, Nick and Julia Arther and Connie and Bruce Holmes dancing in the Anniversary Dance (The Langworthys tied for longest married couple.),
• Phyllis, Connie and I dancing with Linda’s mom (blocked) and the bride and friends
• Doug being dwarfed, I mean flanked, by his two, tall, dark and handsome sons
• Me with my lovely first daughter-in-law, Brooke
• The dinner table center pieces, featuring flowering orchid stems and real live swimming fish. (The fish later went to live in the Hernandez garden pool.)
• The wedding cake which was designed to reflect the couple’s wedding invitation. Note the water filled columns with orchid stems supporting the cake table.
• The bagpiper who played the beautifully unique wedding music

Sunday afternoon, Doug and I boarded our plane and returned to our other life in Yellowstone. At times we truly felt we’d dreamed it all – and what a dream it was!