Happily Ever After

At the beginning of the year, I decided that for 2014 I was going to plan a little monthly LA adventure for the Blah Blah Family. We would go somewhere we'd never been, do something we'd never done, you get the idea. Well, as I have mentioned, one of our close friends got married in February, and it was such a HUUUUGE wedding that everything else took a back seat. First in early February there was the bridal shower, which had a Victorian theme, and which was held at a Victorian tea room, and for which we were told to wear period attire:

The hat isn't mine, but it's pretty great.

I am looking quite the demure and fancy lady here.

Sweet Dub was at the bridal shower because he was the photographer, but the kids did not attend, so we can't count that toward our monthly adventure. As I may have mentioned, the wedding itself had a Roaring 20s/Gatsby theme. Guests were asked to wear attire appropriate to the era. In the two weeks between the shower and the wedding I spent much of my spare time hunting down shoes for all three of us Blah Blah ladies, not to mention dresses, headpieces and jewelry, not to mention all the usual things like cleaning the house, braiding hair, doing laundry and oh, going to my job. So not a lot of time there for an adventure either. 

However: the wedding itself was the first time either of my kids had been to a wedding (okay, Viva did go to a justice of the peace ceremony at a courthouse for her cousin, but that was an on the fly wedding, not a huge event like this). The venue was magnificent, and none of us had ever been there:  the Park Plaza Hotel.  

The Park Plaza Hotel is one of those places from back in the heyday of old Los Angeles, and you can just imagine how incredible it was at the height of its glory. Today, it sits in the midst of a congested, run-down and crime-ridden area. It's an historic landmark and doesn't operate as a hotel any longer, but can be rented out for events like weddings or for TV/film production. Inside, you forget about the funky neighborhood it's in and kind of lose yourself in the glamour. 

Image credit:  http://parkplazala.com.

I took a lot of pics at the beginning and then my phone died right after the ceremony. Awesome. But I can't include a lot of the pics here because I don't have permission to publish from the people who are in them. However, here is my lovely fam:

And here is a pic of me hanging out with Ceeya, Best Flower Girl in the Land, before she went down the aisle:

Sorry, no full-length shot of me. Waiting for Sweet Dub to finish editing all 900 million photos in order to send me at least one. The wedding got underway 45 minutes late, at 3:15 in the afternoon. GAH.  The wedding event, by the way, was segmented into:

(1) the ceremony and
(2) the post-ceremony cocktail hour, both for 100 people;
(3) the reception, which seated 300;
(4) a Cotton Club-themed "after party" (I know. What?), which was to have a capacity of 500 people. (I think you already know that I didn't stay for that part, since for one thing, it was a Sunday night and we had work and school in the morning; and for another, I had children with me.)

If you are wondering whether I actually got up and danced on stage at this event, as I mentioned here:  NO. No, I did not. That portion of the event did not take place until nearly 10:00 PM, and I was long gone by that point. My kids and I were in our jammies and watching How to Train Your Dragon by 7:57 PM.

But the important thing is: it was beautiful, and the newlyweds looked enormously, gorgeously happy. And it was sort of an adventure, and certainly only one that could happen in L.A. The End.