Trish's Travel Blog, a Lovely Wedding, and Backpacks

 In the last installment of Trish’s Post-COVID Travel Blog, she had just arrived in the U.S. after two very long days of travel. You might say that she was dragging at that point, but that would imply some sort of movement on her part. It would be more accurate to say that she was resting her weary, just-recovered-from-COVID bones in preparation of being the mother of the groom at the wedding of Christopher and Audrey. Aside from the wedding, this is surely the world’s most boring imaginary travel blog ever created. Trish left the Airbnb rental exactly three times during her stay. But… There was a wedding!

On Trish’s part, she left the family’s Airbnb for the rehearsal dinner, the wedding, and to get the COVID test required for her return trip back to Honduras. Oh, and she did walk upstairs from her basement bedroom long enough to participate in a family game night. The game night had been a special request by Christopher as his bachelor party alternative. Sometimes family members joined Trish in the basement. But, for the most part, she rested. 

A version of the old TV show, "The Newlywed Game."
Allen and Trish had a distinct advantage, since they've
been married for 37 years. LOL

The rest of the family squeezed in as much hiking and sightseeing as they could in the few days before the wedding . . . in addition to helping with the wedding preparations and set-up. 

As Trish said, “Weddings are exhausting at the best of times.” Everyone was very obliging about letting Trish rest while they dealt with the more exhausting details.

Everything worked out fine and Christopher and Audrey had a perfectly lovely wedding. But they did deal with more than their fair share of vendor issues. The caterer who had been hired to provide food that Audrey could actually eat (given her food allergies) quit weeks before the wedding. There was no time to find someone else to cater, so the bride’s mom had to swoop in and make much of the food herself. 

Then there was the florist who was supposed to arrive at the church the day before the wedding with all of the bouquets, boutonnieres, and bulk flowers for vases… The family received an emergency call at the rehearsal saying that the florist would have everything there the following morning. The wedding was at 1:00. The florist arrived at 10:00 or 11:00, but the order wasn’t right. There were no bouquets or boutonnieres made up, and the flowers were all wrong. Audrey had envisioned lots of white roses and there was nary a white rose in the bunch. Allen and Bethany dashed out to find some white roses. The mother of the bride can add bouquet-maker to her resume, too. With the help of others, she pulled the flower situation together. 

Mr and Mrs!

Even the things that didn’t quite go as planned didn’t prevent the wedding from being 100% beautiful. (If you wish you could have seen the wedding . . . here are the links to the live-stream! Part One and Part Two.) Most importantly, Christopher and Audrey are now Mr. and Mrs! I’m including their gift registry for any of their far-flung friends who would like to bless them with something for their new life together. 

There is some other excitement to add to the travel blog, too. Russell and Kirstin headed off in the Penske truck on Monday and backpack collections are underway. Thank you to everyone finishing up backpacks and filling the boxes. 

Everyone else scattered on Tuesday to make their respective flights. There was a little hitch in the giddyup when it was time for everyone to get their COVID tests for their return flights. Tests must be done a certain number of hours prior to a flight and no one was thinking about the fact that the day before departure was Labor Day. They managed to get the testing done anyway. Allen’s mother’s flight was postponed by a day, but everyone else flew out as expected (give or take a few hours). 

At the time of our most recent conversation, Trish was getting ready to take a shuttle from the hotel to the airport and she was exceedingly thankful for the wheelchair service that made travel possible. This concludes Trish’s Post-COVID Travel Blog, but stay tuned for more details about the backpack collection trip. 

 - posted by Christi