Wedding!

This will be a post mainly of pictures with comments.
The wedding day dawned bright and early.  Very early!  Seattle is so much further north than Austin, and it was really surprising how early the sun rose.  It was another gorgeous day.  I had been so worried about the weather because the day before we left, the Seattle forecast was for rain all day on Saturday.  We needn't have worried.  The weather was perfect, and the Seattle Temple grounds were exquisite.
The sealing was one of the sweetest I have witnessed.  My sweet brother had tears running down his cheeks as he looked into the eyes of his beloved as he made those sacred covenants.  I cherish my sisters and sisters-in-law so much, and so it is a really wonderful thing for me to get a new sister.

Anyway, on to the pictures!  I was not the wedding photographer (thank goodness), but I tried to sneak a few of the bride and groom when I could.
Here they are just coming out of the doors of the Temple, husband and wife!
Shayla had a gorgeous dress that she (almost unbelievably) found at a consignment store.  It fit like it was made for her, and was so elegant and unique.  And her bouquet was made of fabric flowers in her colors that she made herself!  She is really amazing.

They indulged in the obligatory (but tasteful) PDA expected of all newlyweds on their wedding day.  :-)

During the wedding Eva was in charge of both babies and my 3 boys.  Brave girl!  As it turned out, CiCi slept strapped in the sling the whole time, and my boys did a pretty good job of entertaining Rosalia with their menagerie of Webkinz.  I love the way Rosalia is looking at Brigham in this picture.

Eva and the sleeping baby CiCi in the sling (and CiCi's mother Naomi).  Eva will be a natural mother in a few years!
And speaking of Eva, I snapped a couple of pictures of her as we were waiting for Benjamin and Shayla to emerge from the temple.  Eva is 17 years old and pretty much drop-dead gorgeous.  She almost makes me want to be 17 again.  Except I wasn't nearly as pretty as she is when I was 17, so maybe not.  :-)

My three boys were extremely good during all the waiting, picture taking, waiting, and more picture taking that went on for much of the day.  Here's Joseph squinting in the bright, and I think somewhat rare Seattle sun!

And Brigham!

Mosey entertained himself in various ways (he's good at entertaining himself).

 Stealing mom's wheelchair!  What fun to leave her stranded!  :-)

 Posing with the 1970's era bronze statues on the Temple grounds.  My dad is not a huge fan of these, but they make fun climbing structures for 7 year olds.

And here is another gorgeous sister of mine, Naomi.  The married sisters of Benjamin all wore matching outfits (Eva was a bridesmaid so she had a different dress).  Rosalynde made the flowers for the cardigans.  I didn't get a single picture of Rosalynde the whole weekend, and I'm mad at myself for it.  :-(
By the way, Naomi is only 2 months post-partum and she looks about 5000 times better than I ever did that soon after giving birth. 

This is my dad's twin sister Rita, and my Grandma and Grandpa Frandsen, 90 and 91 years old respectively.  I hope I'm as half as sharp at 70 as my grandma is at 90.  Both of them are truly remarkable people.

Here is patient Rosalia hanging out with one of Joseph's Webkinz.  I never saw this child cry once the whole weekend.  She gave a lot of worried looks, especially when some other adult besides her parents dared to come too close into her personal space (she's smack dab in major stranger-anxiety mode), but she never cried.

Here are all my sisters.  My legs were really weak that day for some reason, and in the family pictures my sisters are basically holding me up.  And oh, yeah, I got fancy new RED ergonomic crutches a few weeks ago.  There's one of them.  They're so much snazzier than my old hospital-issue aluminum ones.

 Left to right: Eva, Naomi, me, Rachel, and Rosalynde.  Rosalynde is not the tallest, actually Naomi is, with Eva not far behind, I think, but we were standing on a slope so it worked out.  :-)

And all my sisters and my mom!  When I heard the wedding colors were to be sour apple green, peach, and mustard yellow, I have to admit I couldn't quite envision it.  But when everything came together, it looked great.  Shayla's got a way better eye for that sort of thing than I do.

After the wedding and pictures, I headed back to the hotel with my sisters.  Ben and the boys went with my brothers Brigham and Abraham to the Snoqualmie Falls.  Mosey didn't want to go.  He wanted to go back to the hotel and listen to an audio book on my iPod.  I finally managed to convince him to go by sending him with the iPod and the car charger so he could sit in the car and listen in case he got bored.  I also told him to take pictures of the waterfall so that I could see it!  Well, he didn't get bored and he didn't listen to the iPod.  And he took some great pictures and video of the falls.  He did however manage to somehow lose the (kind of expensive) FM transmitter/car charger for my iPod...  Oh well, life goes on.

Here are the Snoqualmie Falls.  The perspective of these pictures does not show how tall the falls are, and how far DOWN that water is rushing!

They came back a couple hours later and messed around in the hotel room until it was time to go to the reception.  This is the kind of horseplay my boys (and their dad) get into.  It's also the reason I'd NEVER want to be booked into a hotel room adjacent to the Turners.  :-)  (Although to be fair, it was probably only 4:00 PM and I am actually the Quiet Nazi any time past 8:00, as my kids will attest.)



Then it was time for the reception.  Seattle showed its true colors, finally, and rain started to fall right around the time the reception started.  I don't think it stopped anyone from coming, though.
The reception was AMAZING.  It was in the cultural hall (basketball gym) of the Stake Center, but you'd never guess it.  Shayla's decorating and style genius really came through.  She had a vintage theme, and her attention to detail was really astonishing.  I took pictures of every single one of the 25 or so completely unique and individualized table centerpieces so that someday I can copy it for my boys' weddings.  :-)

The entire cultural hall was canopied with this beautiful shimmering, sheer white material.  What was it?  Painter's plastic of all things, pennies per yard, and the absolute perfect weight and texture to create an utterly magical ambiance for the room.

Shayla made a chandelier for the center using a wreath and white Christmas lights.

 

The food was also amazing.  Everything was handmade and unique and delicious.  I took pictures, but I won't post them here because I do believe I ate one of EVERYTHING, and it would just be too embarrassing to reveal to the whole internet exactly how MUCH that was.  :-)

There was the traditional cake-cutting, for which my brother and his new wife were sufficiently civilized not to smash cake all over each other's faces, thank you very much.

And THEN, there was DANCING!!  The Frandsens are really good at many of things, but dancing is not generally at the top of that list (Christian excluded of course!).  However, I think we did ourselves justice that night!  I myself didn't do too much dancing (although Ben volunteered to carry me out to the dance floor and I know he would have except I was too self-conscious), but I sure enjoyed watching it all.

 Did they do more dancing or more kissing?  :-)

 

 Abraham (my brother) cutting the rug with Hannah, Shayla's younger sister.

This was one of my favorite moments of the evening-- Brigham and Abraham doing Russian kicks all the way down the length of the basketball court.  During one of the songs ("We are Family" I think?) everyone got in two rows, and then pairs of people would go down the center between the rows doing their own awesome dance moves before getting in line at the end of the rows in time for the two people at the beginning of the rows to make their fancy moves down the dance floor.  Anyway, when Brigham and Abe went out there with this totally athletic display, the cheering was so loud it must have been heard outside!

This was another favorite moment of the night.  When it was their turn, Naomi and Eva kicked off their shoes and did Can-Can style kicks all the way down the floor.  However, the initial shoe-kicking was a bit more enthusiastic than they intended, I think, and Naomi's right shoe went flying about 20 feet in the air and landed (safely, thank heavens) on the other side of the room!  It was really funny (especially since no one got their eye put out by a flying heel!).

 

Rachel and my dad dancing away (moments like this make me sure wish my legs worked.  I would have loved to have danced with my dad that night).

And mama and daddy of course.  

Finally it was time for the obligatory bouquet-throw (no, Eva did not catch it THANK GOODNESS SINCE SHE IS ONLY 17!).

Then it was time for the send-off!  Benjamin and Shayla ran out into the rain through a tunnel of bubbles and were off on their honeymoon.  They went to the Florida keys and enjoyed a week of sun and sand before coming back to real life as a married couple.

Thanks for getting married, you two, it was a really fun day!!