A Much Needed Vacation!

Steven and I spent the last week in New York! Steven is working so hard lately, that a vacation is exactly what we needed; however we now need a vacation from our vacation. We attended my cousins wedding in Rochester, New York, spent time at Niagara Falls, and then New York City. This was the furthest North Steven has ever been and we enjoyed the time with my family. I will blog later about Niagara Falls and the city, because there is plenty to say about the wedding.

My Cousin Keith and his fiance live in Las Vegas and planned to get married at my aunt's house in Rochester where he grew up. There have been months of preparation done to my aunt's house to prepare for this day. My Mother and my Aunt's twin sister have been in Rochester for 3 weeks helping to prepare for the wedding. They painted the house, put in all new landscaping and huge pond with waterfall, put up a very large tent to house the reception and very nice stone area to get married at. The Weather in Rochester has been gorgeous the entire time that my mom has been there. My family and Steven and I got there on Thursday before the wedding (after an 8 hour layover in Chicago - blah) and helped with the last minute things. All we had left to do on Saturday morning before the wedding was drape the tables under the tent for the reception. Then at 5:30 am we woke up to rain, and thunder and lightening! We all came together in the living room to discuss what we should do. Maybe it will stop soon and dry up before 7 pm. (not according to the forcast), Maybe we should go outside and see how bad it is (the tent is bowing from the weight of the water and there is standing water under the tent).

What a nightmare! I felt horrible for Barbara the bride. After the airport lost her luggage (finally came right before the rehearsal dinner) and now this! My Cousin Keith told her to go about her day as if everything was fine and we would figure something out. Well, we ended up using the garden tent that was to house the porter potties on the drive way for the alter and bought more tents to cover the seats. Now we just needed to decorate it like it was meant to be that way, and find somewhere for the reception!

We finally found a church that would let us use their gymnasium for free and started shuttling everything for the reception (food, serving plates, decorations) to the church gym that was 45 minutes away. My uncle and i ran to Kinkos to run off directions to the new reception to hand out and we were finally on our way to a wedding!

By 7pm guests were seated, the rain stopped and the bride was coming down the aisle! We did it and it didn't matter if it was under a beautiful big top tent or in a gym....They were happily married. The next day (sunday) the weather was gorgeous again and my aunt was having a hard time understanding why God would allow such a nasty day after all the hard work and preperation. She told my mom that she felt she needed to ask God why and prayed before bed on Sunday night. Monday morning she told us that she had a horrible dream that we proceeded to have the reception under the large tent in the backyard. In her dream, the lights that we strung inside the tent fell into the water causing a current of electricity to flow through the water on the ground. This caused everyone to be electricuted! What a horrible vision!

I can't say for sure that this would have happened if we would have gone with everything as planned, but it just goes to show that God has everything under control! Why question him? We thought that moving the ceremony to the drive way was the worst case scenario, but it could have been much, much worse. We are just thankful that we were all together for the special day and we all pulled together to create a beautiful wedding at the last minute.