las sen~oras at the ridvan celebration

not quite sure what was going on before they put their smiles on when they realized someone was taking their picture :D

all three have gone home now... missing them way too much...

more wedding pics :)

can't quite disguise mi deseo de casarme en costa rica... jejeje... somehow turned a chilly desert setting into a tropical-ish location! :D
mami and mormor, giddy, coming up the stairs to the terrace... sweet sweet yas and patrik's casi-brother charles

*happy sigh*
helen, la mujer mas tierna del mundo, and dear shiva, muppet enthusiast who i somehow convinced to take our wedding photos! (muchisimas gracias, chiva shiva!)
aah, peter, the coolest swede i know and wedding planner extraordinaire... his terrace will soon become the most saught-after bwc wedding spot...

mormor and mr. mcjeres, who came all the way from costamcrica!la familia en bahji after the wedding :)

~*~ le mariage ~*~

there were a million steps leading up to the terrace where the ceremony took place...
and we were half an hour late, so the guests waited and waited...
the vows...
the signing...mon belle-mère... tres leches como wedding cake...

la familia... ferdinand & rebecca (patrik's parents), the newlyweds, mormor, mamita, carole&matthew (patrik's sister and brother-in-law)....
my "bridesmaids" joanna and sherri...
le bouquet...we're married!!!
fotos en bahji...





exhausted...

several days without writing.... jejeje... i'm such as bad about blogging as i am about writing...

~*~

a lot to tell, though! the wedding is just five days away (eek!) and so all the last minute things are getting done... flowers and plates and food and program (jejjee... haven't even figured out the program yet... what prayers to say, who to say them, when to do rings and vows and signing adn all that good stuff...) i get these little moments of freaking out about not having enough time, but then i realize it's all very simple and there's no reason to worry :)

~*~

saturday i moved into our new flat at the bottom of the mountain, with a beautiful view of the shrine and a very very squeeky bed. and a barking dog next door. (ha!) still unpacking, and need to get everything cleaned up and beautiful before mommy and mormor get here, or else they'll be tripping over my luggage and random bits of stuff that hasn't found a place yet... oh, and must get the hot water turned on! (hopefully today...).

~*~

and then saturday night i had my big blow out bachelorette party, complete with games and sappy advice from all the ladies and sexy lingerie (woohoo!)... i had a stomach ache when i got there, but laughed it off with all my friends... someone was taking photos, so maybe i'll be able to post them soon...

~*~

and last night i met my suegros!!!

~*~

why why WHY don't i ever think to take out my camera?...

~*~

they are very sweet and funny, and brought lots of gifts, big bright beautiful cameroonian clothes for me and patrik (and a little something for my mommy and daddy!) and some house decorating stuff and big big hugs... it's nice to see where patrik comes from :) and to see who he might turn into in thirty years! ;)

~*~

and, my days of flying under the radar and being pretty much anonymous at the BWC are over... now that i'm part of this family, there are lunches and dinners and meetings planned with house members and itc members... the whole works... i've gotten used to being an unknown face and name... no longer :)

~*~

wish my seesters were here...

inside myself

with all the excitement and planning and soon-ness of the wedding, i've found that i spend a lot of time inside myself, not necessarily worrying, but definitely thinking... trying to grasp what this new life will be like, what it implies, how it will all come together. a wedding is just a day, a really nice day filled with people who love you wishing you well, but what comes after is huge. it's joining your life with someone else's, with all that implies. it's a radical change, you know? and it's so bizarre that i'm doing this for the second time.

*

and at the same time, it's such an easy thing. to decide to live with someone you love, that you admire and respect, to make a family, to just stick around to see what happens, no matter what. it's almost as if, if there wasn't this ritual, this ceremony, to mark the difference between before and after, that the change would just be this transitional, easy, softflowing thing.

*

maybe, too, it's that i've delegated so much of the wedding to friends :) it makes for a stress free existence! i just have the image of how i want that morning to be, very calm, very beautiful, very simple, and i know that if i start worrying about how many vegetable platters to get or how many chairs we need to borrow, i'll arrive that morning much too aware of the silly details and not aware enough of how unimportant those details are! :) it also means, tho, that i feel like a guest at my own wedding, which is an interesting feeling... highly recommend it!

*

new flat :)

the (quite short) search is over -- we chose our new flat friday night... 137 hameginim will be our new home, at least for a while... we had three other choices, one of which nice with three bedrooms but was about an hour away, two on the street where patrik lives now and that were a little, mmm, strange (one was three floors DOWN, which kind of freaks me out), so the last one we looked at way at the bottom of the mountain was the nicest of all.... it has one bedroom and isn't very big, but it feels very open and has a nice view of the shrine... plus, there's an elevator (sigh of relief) as opposed to hundreds of stairs to walk up and down! :)

i'll send photos once i move in this saturday... patrik gets a key to the place the day of our wedding... hehehe

it should be nice, at least for now. hopefully we'll be able to move to a bigger or at least more centrally-located place soon... :)