Entry 10

Entry for 9/12:

Today I woke up in Napa Valley with my girlfriend, Dana, and her entire family. I am here for the weekend celebrating her cousin’s wedding. It is currently raining. With the wedding set to take place at 3:30 outdoors, some of us are concerned that it will be a wet wedding. Yet, while the rest of us are nervous, the bride is thrilled. She is running around in the rain going, “It’s raining!!! It is good luck when it is raining on your wedding day.” I am not going to have much time to write today, so I am going to check back in after the ceremony in order to finish this post.

It is now 11:00 PM. The wedding was beautiful! I have never seen a ceremony take place in such a beautiful landscape. My girlfriend’s family owns property up here and invited 175 people t come celebrate with them in Napa. Behind the ceremony, instead of seeing walls we were looking at a gorgeous, scenic view of the Napa Valley. In fact, we were facing Robin Williams house in the distance. The joke of the party was to dance and sing so loud that we wake him up.

Anyways, I had a wonderful time today. I have been with my girl since the beginning of college and have met her mom’s entire family, yet I had still not met much of her dads side. Her dad comes from an Italian Catholic family and is the youngest of twelve siblings. Remarkably, ten of his siblings were there. I had not met a single one of them prior to the wedding to make things interesting.

While the spotlight was not on me and was focused on the bride and groom, I was constantly meeting new people and introducing myself. I absolutely love her father and was excited to finally get to meet his side of the family. Despite many of them being crazy (his gay brother threatened me with a shotgun if I ever hurt his niece), they were all lovely people with large hearts. I know that her Uncle approves of me now and that I passed his test, yet it was my first time being threatened with a shotgun. This happened at the way end of the night, both of us were a little drunk, him more than me, so I knew he was joking. In fact, this just took place 30 minutes ago!

Tomorrow we will have brunch with the immediate family and then Dana and I have to make our flights to come back to Tucson. This was a very quick trip, yet a very powerful, meaningful occasion. I am very thankful to have been there to celebrate with her family and am thankful to have been invited. My cousin is getting married in the summer in Providence, RI. I am excited to go and bring Dana to one of my family’s weddings.