If you know me at all (or read past blogs) you are tuned into the fact that mine is a huge family. My mother is the oldest of 8 children so you can imagine how many aunts, uncles and cousins I have just from
her side of the family!! :)
True to our Mexican roots - we have many get-togethers, eat a lot, are loud, gregarious and fun to be around. And when something extra special comes up - engagements, births, graduations - the Araizas (my mom's maiden name) sure know how to throw a great shindig!
In this case, one of my 19 Araiza first-cousins:
Jacob got married last weekend to his long-time novia:
Rosa. A wedding is always a blessed and huge celebration with much happiness - and this was no exception. Oddly enough, for a hispanic family, with major role models of the love and importance of 'familia' and having children - 11 of us (me included) have not yet taken the plunge to get hitched. Therefore, the 8 weddings we
have had the last 2 decades (starting with my oldest sister Cecilia) have been far between.
Thus, one can imagine that when we do have one - it's hailed as the 'Wedding of the Year'! It feels like we've all been waiting and emailing and making travel plans for ages! Being Northern California residents for some years now, the couple decided to have the wedding take place in San Francisco. Most of the 150 guests were either our southern Cal family or Rosa's also large family. Thus everyone essentially made a vacation trip out of it.
No complaints there - who doesn't want to go to San Fran in the summertime??! It was a real blast with a lot of the family staying at the same hotel in Union Square - thus starting the celebration days early by dining together and hitting the hip hotel bar's Happy Hour.
As for the wedding, itself - we all know Jake enough to know that his Cal Berkeley education and liberal upbringing would call for a somewhat, ahem, unconventional ceremony. I loved it! Taking place amongst the tall redwood trees of
Stern Grove near Golden Gate Park, the ceremony was full of nature, spirituality, and ethnic origins as the bilingual and uber-cool officiant dressed in white linen traditional ethnic dress first greeted all the guests asking us all to take a bead and hold it in our left hand for good blessings and love throughout the ceremony, until the end when we placed them all back in front in a basket for the newlyweds.
With Jake being a superb music-lover, collector and DJ, I knew music would be a treat at this wedding - and thus I greatly enjoyed the
conjunto trio softly playing their latin rhythms and percussion throughout the ceremony off to the side. In the smoke of burning sage as incense, a bird's feather was waved from head-to-foot over the couple in a traditional Apache gesture, as well we acknowledged the different signs and directions of the earth (north, south, east and west) and their representations - - it was all very cool!!
Of course, being San Fran and in the midst of the very tall trees blocking out the little sun there was, it was quite chilly, thus as soon as the ceremony ended - we all (very uncharacteristically for such a Catholic family, might I add? hahahah) rushed the open bar and started sipping on wonderful rum, wine and sangria to take the edge off. Pictures followed - Patrick took some of the Aunts and Uncles and then of us cousins - everyone was in ridiculously great spirits and by the time the heat lamps were turned on and the yummy latin food was laid out - the noise level was as high as the alcohol buzz most of us were feeling!
There is so much I can write about. I shall try to sum up the highlights:
great dancing music provided by DJ David (my cousin Maddy's husband); the 'loteria' table cards that told us where we were sitting were amazingly hand-drawn by Rosa's sister; the gorgeous, multi-colored and multi-textured flowers were painstakingly and generously done by cousin Maddi (employing her old job's skills); great speeches were toasted to; Cousin Paul (freshly returned from his 2-month sojourn to Europe) was actually able to pull off wearing blindingly-white dress shoes; Rosa's tiny 94 year-old grandmother was drinking wine both at the wedding and the previous evening at 11pm in the hotel bar with everyone!!
It was such a great time - and one last word - as I informed Patrick, "All celebrations in our family are such blessings, but especially my cousins that were close to me in age (Jacob, Maddi, Noey, me, sister Sara and Jude) because they we were not only close in age, but also some of our best friends growing up: attending camp and the beach together, play time at each other's houses, going to TJ when we got older - shoot: my cousins were the only ones my mom let us spend the night at!"
Therefore, an extra special abrazo of happiness to my younger cousin Jacob - who, being the youngest of our troop, was forced to eat dirt, dress up as a girl, follow Maddy around on all fours as her dog, make lemonade stands with us, play church with us (we'd put uncooked popcorn kernals in his squished-up wonderbread and make him eat it for 'communion') and seeing him always play with his dinosaurs and Transformers - I am mighty proud of the tall, handsome, gentle, and socially-aware young man he has grown into. I am so happy for him and Rosa - Que Dios los Bendiga!!!
Click below and watch the slideshow!!
The house we rented was huge - tons of bedrooms, 3 living rooms, a pool hall and even an indoor jacuzzi -ahhh. We have a blast playing games, sledding, the kids take ski lessons and all the adults (sans accident-prone Elsa) ski and snowboard. 
