Rocky beaches & wedding vows

July 2, 2008

What a full day. We started by going with Franco and Emily & kids to a relatively family-friendly beach on the Mediterranean Sea. Of course, after getting all the way to Southern France, I left the camera at the hotel. So Franco took a couple of pictures at the beach on his cell phone, and I’ll get one from the beach posted as soon as I can. The beach was a little rocky, but the water was warm and most all of the women kept their tops on (the ones that didn’t were old and portly anyway).

We grabbed lunch, and then we had to hurry back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding. We were in such a rush when we left that I forgot the camera again. So we came half-way around the world for a wedding, and dummy me didn’t get any pictures. It worked out okay though because Maria and Memo asked me to video tape the wedding for them, and then I got pictures later at the fancy dinner party.

The civil wedding was held at the town hall (the religious ceremony at the Mormon temple will follow in a few days), and it was right in the middle of the old town complete with tiny little cobblestone streets and old fountains. The wedding was very nice, but it was fairly short. We took a bunch of pictures in the old town, and then we headed over to the first reception.

This reception was held at the Mormon Church in Vitrolles, and it lasted a few hours with a lot of people coming to congratulate the new couple. After that we swung by the hotel to grab the camera and then drove to the dinner party / reception. This was typically French with several courses of dinner in an old restored estate that had once been a pilgrimage destination in medieval times (or something like that; I was a little tired when I read the history), and it lasted until after three in the morning (although we turned in pumpkins and left around midnight). It was all very fancy and a new cultural experience. It was also very apparent that Fabio and Elodie are happy together.

I actually felt useful because I was able to trouble shoot some problems they were having with a slide show they were showing on a video projector – see that Masters Degree in Educational Technology is really paying off. Good thing we came, huh?