Reception
Started: 2021-10-30 17:04:36
Submitted: 2021-10-30 17:54:50
Visibility: World-readable
After the wedding, the reception
After Willy and Vero's wedding and taking post-wedding pictures, the next item on the agenda was the wedding reception, held at the PUC church in a room separated from the chapel by a covered breezeway.
The tables were decorated with bunches of grapes and grape vines, which seemed appropriate for a wedding held overlooking Napa Valley, although Napa Valley's signature product was not served at the wedding.
The celebratory sparkling beverage used for the toast, however, came from my new home, Santa Cruz County, a point I noted when I offered a toast to my brother ad his new wife.
The entire wedding party, all of the attending family, and all of the guests sat at a single long table. Most of us had been given some role in the wedding ceremony itself, and my household of four occupied one-quarter of the seats at the table. It was a cozy reception for a small, Delta Wave wedding.
We ate dinner at the reception, then I offered a toast to the couple to go with the Martinelli's sparkling apple cider, then we watched the couple cut their vegan chocolate wedding cake.
To get the best pictures I planted myself in front of the small table, which probably obstructed the view of the rest of the people around me; but that meant I could get the close-up cutting-the-cake shots like this one.
Then they served each other their first bites of their wedding cake.
The couple retreated to their seats while we served wedding cake to the rest of the guests.
After the cake the reception began to break up. Kiesa took the kids back to our Airbnb in Santa Rosa, and I tried to make myself useful cleaning up the chapel and the reception and putting everything back into order. I stepped into the empty chapel, still lit up, and climbed onto the empty stage to look back at the seats sitting there. I felt like we'd been through a lot in the chapel, even though I'd first seen it only that morning.
Once we'd cleaned up the church, I caught a ride back to Santa Rosa with Bethany and Josh. We stopped at Safeway to pick up snacks for a small afterparty at our Airbnb's kitchen. I'm sure we were quite a sight — Josh and I in suits, Bethany in a formal dress. I don't always shop at Safeway in Santa Rosa after 21:00 on a holiday weekend, but when I do I wear a suit.
On Monday morning — Labor Day — we met the family one last time for breakfast in Santa Rosa, then headed back home. Bethany and Josh drove back to SFO to fly home to New York, Vero's mother and sister also went to the airport to fly home, my parents drove to Angwin for one more night before driving home to Walla Walla, I drove home with my nuclear family to Santa Cruz, and the newly-married couple drove up the California coast for a couple days' honeymoon to begin their new life together.
After all of the drama of the pandemic wedding I was relieved that it all worked out in the end. I'm happy that Vero has joined our family at last.
All of the pictures I took at the wedding and the reception are here: Willy and Vero's Wedding.
