Reminiscing

Last night Jim and I took the opportunity to look at the video, that was made by my brother, Steve, of Laura and Robert's wedding reception. We have a young friend that is getting married this summer and she is having her reception in the same place Laura had hers and Kim wants me to advise her on decorating the old mansion. It is a beautiful old home in the Berkeley Hills that was once owned by William Randolph Hearst.

The Institute
A link to see it when it was a new home.

We were so blessed to be able to have their reception here. The church bought the home years ago completely furnished. Standing in the entry way were some five foot Chinese urns that were appraised after the purchase, at almost the entire amount of the sale price of the home, which was one million dollars!

The church has used the building for seven decades as the Institute of Religion building for UC Berkeley. There was no cost to us for the use of the building and it was truly such a blessing. Shortly after that the director of the Institute, our friend Brent, passed away and after that the building was not used for weddings for a long time. I am so happy it is being used for receptions again now.

The home has room after room of stunning furnishings that are ideal for wedding decorating. The massive spiraling staircase and multiple mantels were so much fun to decorate. Their wedding was two days after Christmas so we took full advantage of red flowers and greenery, crackling fires in the fireplaces, etc. We even brought in 7 large real Christmas trees that were given to us by a Christmas tree lot closing down for the year. We had so many good, good friends that helped us put it all together. The whole thing was so much fun and just a miracle in so many ways.

The fun part of watching the video was just seeing what everyone looked like 12+years ago. All of our kids looked like teens...just babies really! That was in the day of the BIG glasses..honestly that alone made us all look funny! Jim has his dark, longer, Wayne Newton hair and I had my curly perm. Yikes, we looked pretty frightful but very happy! Robert and Laura looked so adorable and had such a bright future still ahead.

It is fun to contemplate all the lovely things that have happened to all of our kids over this dozen years. They were the last of our three weddings in four months for the kids. What a whirlwind year of fun and planning and working hard to make it all happen as they wished.

The best part of the whole video was just seeing everyone that attended, especially so many that have now passed away. It just made us realize how much we loved those who have gone before and seeing them on video is so much more life like that just looking at a photo. To see the kids all so happy and all our favorite people gathered in one place was just amazing. It was a huge nice, warm fuzzy. I did really well with it until I watched the daddy/daughter dance with Laura continually patting her Daddy on his back to assure him things would be wonderful even if his youngest baby was all grown up now, married and moving away. It was very touching and brought tears to my eyes. Definitely one of the ten best days of my life. It made it easier giving her to Robert...he is perfect for her in every way. We couldn't have picked better ourselves if we had searched the world over. We feel the same about our other kids' choices. What more could any parent want for their kids? We went to bed feeling very blessed last night.

So that was what we did for family night last night. Wish you could have joined us for the fun!