A Wedding at our House!

So I did say I would tell why I have been so busy, and now I have the chance to do that. We had a wedding in our backyard last weekend. I was the designated wedding planner and decorator for the event. It was for our very close friends Kyle and Hana Smith. She is from Japan and came to America to go to school where they met and dated. They had pretty much decided they would get married, but she only had a student visa so she had to go back to Japan since she had graduated from school. This past December she came back and enrolled in school down here so she could be with Kyle. They kept waiting to see if her parents could come out from Japan and it just never happened. So at the last minute they decided they would rather just go ahead and get married instead of waiting any longer. Plus she had to get married or start school in the next 2 weeks to still be considered a legal immigrant, and school as an international student is extremely expensive and pointless since she already has a degree and would only be going so she could stay in country. Anyways so we threw together a backyard wedding in our backyard in only 2 weeks. It was a rough and busy two weeks because several of the people that would have been helping me were not able to help. Two of our other extremely close friends were out of town visiting family because he is leaving for Afghanistan this weekend, and Jono went to CO to see family, and I usually rely on him for help in lots of ways. Also Jake has been really busy with a huge thing at work that had him working late hours; plus his best friend (that also would have been helping me out wherever he could) got really sick and was in the hospital for over a week. So Jake was working really late and then going to the hospital to spend time with him and support him however he could. I was kindof on my own (with the help of the bride and groom of course.) Aside from arranging wedding decor and ordering food (no, I wasn't going to take on cooking as well), we also did our own DJing, and we had a lot of stuff to borrow/rent. We also did a complete overhaul on the yard. At first it didn't seem so bad, but once we got going we had a lot of work to do. We had to prune and trim every tree and bush, plus weed pulling, and raking up lots and lots of pine needles. We had about 10 bags of yard waste picked up on Wednesday and by Saturday Jake was taking another 35 bags of yard waste to the dump! It was a lot. But now we don't have to do yard work for a long time:) I had a lot of help on the yard thankfully. Everything came together in the end with only a few panic attacks here and there. It turned out beautifully and the weather was so unbelievably wonderful. It wasn't blistering hot, or rainy or windy. Just perfect. So here are the pics from the wedding in total random order:

Here are Kyle and Hana in their Kimonos. Hana has her own family Kimono in Japan, but she couldn't get it here in time, but she was able to borrow one. She was married in a wedding dress because it was an American-style ceremony. She said she didn't want to wear a kimono unless she was having a very traditional Japanese ceremony. Plus, it is traditional for the bride to change attire 4 or 5 times throughout the wedding celebrations. So they changed to Kimonos for the dinner and speeches. Then back into wedding attire for dancing and the rest of the party. It was really neat to watch the little Japanese ladies dress her in the Kimono. It is such a complicated process. It was really beautiful and none of the pics I got do it justice.

Here's our reception set-up for the dinner. It looked so awesome at night with all of the lights.

Here's a picture during the ceremony. They were married by my stake president even though they aren't mormon. They all work at the same place, so Kyle felt more comfortable asking someone to marry them that he knew. They aren't church goers, so he didn't want to just get some random priest. The coolest thing was that during the ceremony a hummingbird came and hovered right between them during their vows. It was so beautiful. I wish I had caught that on camera, it was such a neat touch.

They didn't have a wedding party, but they did ask Mckayla and Lyla to be flower girls. They looked so cute and concentrated so hard on their flower-scattering duties.

Here's the reception set-up without people in it yet. We didn't have enough chairs to have them in both places so we had to ask people to take their chairs over to the reception. Kindof tacky, but oh well. I don't think anyone minded.

I had to show off the centerpiece Hana and I came up with. We also rolled the silverware and made the wedding favors.

Here's the ceremony set up. Jake has worked so hard for us to have green grass, and here we are putting it to good use.

I meant to take some pictures of the food, but I forgot. It was amazing! Hana is friends with the owner of a Japanese restaurant in town and she catered the event. She brought everything on big Japanese platters and it was delicious! She brought a lot though. There was a lot of sushi and spring rolls, tempura, potstickers, rice, teriyaki chicken, and a few other things. It was really really good. Anyways we are so happy for Kyle and Hana and their marriage! I am also so happy for all of the people that helped out and let us borrow things to make it nice, and I am so grateful for the perfect weather. We really are becoming quite the party house, but this was our biggest event to date. I don't think I'll be topping it anytime soon.