Wedding

After returning from golf and lunch, nap time ensued, after which some leisurely activities were enjoyed, my memory of which are foggy. Deana’s napping and Leila and Blair are swimming, so I’ll make some stuff up in hopes I’m not too far off.

Wedding scheduled to start at 8:00 in Altea Hills, which existed up to now only in our imaginations. Looking at a Google map, the roads look sort of like real roads with addresses and stuff… Easy, right? Well. All dressed up, we headed off, with Deana driving, I think. Or maybe it was me….no matter, one of us was driving. Blair was poised over his phone with Google girl directing us with gentle instructions to take 2nd exit off roundabout and stuff like that. Sometimes she told us what to do after we’d already done it, or possibly done something else that we weren’t supposed to do. Remarkably she never got pissed at us, just calmly re-calculated our route and then we would make another wrong turn. The Altea hills are just that…hills, with lots of sharp switchback turns and confusing names. Somehow, we actually arrived at what looked like our destination.. Google girl insisted it was on our left, but since the only thing on our left was a construction site, we trusted that the place on our right, with the correct address number, was probably it. Not a lot of signs of life until we entered a courtyard like area, looked over a railing and saw people making party like noises and appearing to be poised for a wedding. We made it!
Meandering through the maze of stairs and house, we encountered people, among them Bettine, so we were now pretty confident we were in the right place. Greetings were shared all around. Les and Justin were fitted out in the male version of wedding party garb…white shirt and pants, blue suspenders. An Irish band was tuning up in the corner of the upper deck area and proceeded to play Clancy Brothers numbers and other wonderful Irish fiddle and fife music.Tim was particularly enthralled and even requested they play Johnson’s Motor Car. They laughed, knew the song but hadn’t learned to play it. Oh well, they were still incredibly swell.

Wedding was a little late in starting, so lots of milling about, engaging in conversations with various types, some actually familiar, and snacking on various snackables. Tim chipped a tooth, so is spending the rest of the stay with a half tooth drawing his tongue to it…all the time! Doesn’t hurt, thankfully, so we shall carry on.

Wedding finally started , with everyone assembled on the upper deck. Louise was escorted by Bettine, and Les escorted Joanna, all looking lovely and happy. Very informal ceremony performed by a Spanish woman of some official description that we never learned, and interpreted by a friend who periodically chimed in. All very sweet and wonderful, lots of clapping and yahooing after the vows, and a relaxed reception line.

Bettine’s sister Christine was very jolly and sported a real camera, taking lots of candid photos of everyone. Food was eventually dispensed, which consisted of spectacular looking  grilled beef, sausage and skewers of veggies, plus a very nice salad.

The wedding party

Our crew ended up sitting with Les and Bettine and had a very nice time in the breezy comfort of the hillside surroundings. The house where this was all taking place was rented for the occasion. Had a beautiful pool in the middle of the patio, just below the upper deck where the ceremony took place.  Fancy umbrella structures that could be rotated and deployed if needed. There were photos in the house of the construction of this fortress, showing cranes lifting giant exotic palm like trees over the house and into position around the patio and pool. Everything looked like it had been there forever, but alas, not that long.
The party carried on into cake cutting time, just around midnight, after which our hearty crew decided to retire. Leila thought it rude that we left so early…the party was just getting started. But the rest of us were ready for bed. Leila keeps demonstrating that she has more energy than the rest of us, so Tim has decided to stop acting like such a fuddy duddy and make an effort to be more playful. We are, after all, in Spain. Best take advantage of it. We retired with a plan for Sunday in our heads…adventure!