My name is Charles and it has been ten months (holy crap!) since my last blog post…and so much has happened since chestnut season (my last post)..
Ok, let me start with excuses, maybe the first one will suffice. Among other things…I got married. Twice.
I can explain. My wife Lynne and I were married this year, once in April in the New Jersey, where she is from. The second time around was in Cantabria, Northern Spain, where I am from. Needless to say, I never realized how much work goes into weddings. Ours were both awesome, if very different.
I won´t bore you with everything, as each wedding could be painfully detailed, but here is a quick review of why this blog has gone on hold for months…
The first was a fairly traditional American Catholic wedding with a lone best man and maid of honor. We held it at a lakeside beach club with presence of all of our American friends and family and a few of our Spanish family and friends. Incredibly beautiful and emotional. Perfectly planned and executed, mostly thanks to my incredible wife, my very organized mother-in-law and my mediating father-in-law. Formal yet very fun and pretty much perfect in every way humanly possible.
– as Lynne likes to say, a “schmoopy” pic of us on the beach
– my beautiful wife Lynne and her crazy girls (don´t be fooled by their “cuteness”)
– love this pic, me and my Strake Jesuit high school band of brothers
The other was a very non-standard Spanish wedding. Imagine Architectural Digest meets, Cantabrian bagpipers and dancing, mixed with the INXS video of “Mediate” where they throw the poster boards off into the air. All of it aided by my wonderful nieces and nephews. Most of our Spanish family and friends and a few of our American family and friends this time around. Ultra laid-back (as all the pressure was off) and very eclectic.
– my entrance with our nieces and nephews.. did I mention I am a bagpiper?
– the bagpipe band I am in, Banda de Gaitas Gedio, who played the wedding for us
– our makeshift “altar” and officiating nieces and nephews
– our Thai lamp ceremony after dark, a sight to be seen
I will go into one detail of all of this in my next post, our rings, as they tie back into the principal subject of this blog: Life in Northern Spain… I just had to get all this off my chest 😉
Northern Exposure Spain 