A Tale of 4 Weddings (Part 2)

This past weekend featured wedding no. 2 in our Summer of Weddings – Alex & Alyssa.

This wedding was especially near and dear to our hearts because Alex and Tom have been been working on a research project at the University together for a couple of years now, and he has become one of Tom’s closest friends. Tom describes him as one of the most loyal friends he’s ever had, and we joke Alex is his “Work Husband” because the two seem to be inseparable. He is also a fairly frequent guest at our dinner table because as a full-time college student his diet can be a bit sketchy at times.

We once convinced Nicholas that we were hiring Alex as his new “Manny” and we had him believing it for a couple of days. Once we realized that Nicholas was actually starting to look forward to the idea we had to break the bad news to him.

Leading up to their vintage-themed outdoor wedding it seemed as though Mother Nature wasn’t going to cooperate with their plans. We had back-to-back heavy storms for almost the entire week beforehand – but fate was meant to smile down upon them, it would seem. It was a beautiful day for an outdoor wedding in her parents’ backyard – although the word “backyard” feels like a huge understatement because it’s the backyard of most people’s dreams. It’s the sort of backyard you see on an episode of some HGTV show that features great backyards. That’s how beautiful (and huge) this backyard was.

They have their own pond – complete with a bridge, strategically placed seating areas, a row boat (for romantic poetry reading sessions with the one you love) and a giant fountain. It’s not your average backyard. It’s almost as if it was built to host weddings. From the sound of it, parts of it actually were built just to host this wedding.

Alex may very well have married one of the most photogenic women I’ve ever met. I think Alyssa was made to be in front of a camera, because she’s a natural at it. The two of them have spent the past 4 years apart while Alyssa obtained her degree in Elementary Education on the other side of the state. They have  logged more miles back and forth across this state than many people do in a lifetime.

Now that they’ve tied the knot, she’ll be moving here to start her career in education while Alex finishes his degree here at the University. We’ve been able to spend a fair amount of time with Alyssa during some of her trips here while she was in school and she’s the sort of person you immediately fall in love with. We could never really understand what a such a young couple found so interesting about a (relatively) old couple like us but we weren’t going to question it.

I could go on for days about how evident it was that a lot of thought and attention to detail went into this wedding. It was like something out of a magazine, but they still managed to keep it very intimate and comfortable.

We really couldn’t be happier for the two of them. They’re the kind of couple that you want great things for. And now that Alyssa will be moving to the area permanently, we look forward to spending more time with the two of them as a couple.

And so we close the book on our second wedding of the summer – one that will be hard to forget. You’ll notice that “A Tale of 3 Weddings” has increased by one now. We received another invitation in the mail between the last wedding and this one – love is in the air this summer, for sure.