Congratulations Donald and Lisa!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you read my son Donald's and daughter-in-law Lisa's blogs then you know that today is their 8th Anniversary! Oh and BTW if you only read Lisa's, please go to Donald's and leave him a comment too. As of now Lisa has like 21 comments, and Donald has only 3.

Reading their posts today took me back to that day, and I realized what a good topic for a post that would make. So here goes.

Donald and Lisa, had been together for a little more than a year before they were married. For them it was pretty much love at first sight. Actually though, it was more like, love from first IM. They met on the computer, of all places. I was skeptical at first because Donald had been involved in a disastrous relationship by way of computery a few months before he met Lisa on line. I will make this LONG story SHORT.

They met in person. They loved each other immediately. They became engaged. They were married.

Alright now to the wedding.

They were married in the Moore Mansion. The Mo-Ma is a Tri-City landmark that you see while crossing the Blue Bridge from Kennewick to Pasco. It is a beautiful white mansion that I would probably categorize as Greco-Roman in design.
I was so excited for them to be married there. I had seen that place while crossing the blue bridge my whole life and had always been fascinated with it.

Lisa's mom Holly, set to work helping Lisa get everything rolling. Lisa wanted a Cinderella Wedding. Her paternal Grandfather Claude Coats was a background artist for Walt Disney way back at the beginning. He worked on most of the early Disney films. Because of this, well and also the fact that she had spent most of her life about 20 minutes from Disneyland and went there often, Lisa loved everything Disney. So it wasn't at all unusual for her to want a Cinderella fairy tale wedding.

The mansion was just as beautiful inside as I had always imagined. There was some of the most amazing woodwork I had ever seen. There was an incredible staircase made of the loveliest polished wood. The rooms up stairs were pretty nice but the ceilings were so low up there I felt a little claustrophobic. There were however, these big ornate windows on the upper floor, that had incredible balconies lookin over the lawns.

Talk about perfect picture taking opportunities.

Holly really went above and beyond. In the parlor of the Mo Ma, she set up a scene from the movie. She had bought a beautiful pink gown to have along with several other items to reproduce the scene in Cinderella when the mice make her the dress to wear to the ball.

The wedding attendants arrived in a limousine. They included Lisa's sister Jennifer, her college roommate, her two little nieces and my oldest grandaughter Abbey ( who was two then but is now ten) Then came Lisa, looking every bit the Princess.

She arrived in a beautiful Horse Drawn Carriage.

The wedding ceremony was really nice. The thing that I enjoyed the most though was as soon as they were pronounced Husband and Wife, Donald picked Lisa up and twirled her around as he kissed her. It was such a sweet, genuine and spontanious act of love that I think everyone there was touched by the joy they were feeling.

The rest of the night went a little too quickly. And that is no exaggeration. This was the only dark spot on the whole event.

The couple that owned the Mansion at the time, were mean, nasty people.

Everything was all sweet and friendly when things were in the planning stages (in other words before they got their money). But the night of the wedding they were just pushing things along as fast as they could.

There was a sit down buffet type dinner.

I was hanging out with Lisa's parents because they didn't know anyone else there. Plus they were just really nice and I liked them. Somehow we had ended up at the end of the buffet line and by the time we found a table and sat down to eat and visit, the woman-in-charge, I think her name was Tammy, came and told us to hurry and get out to the lobby because the cake was going to be cut. I didn't get more than a couple of bites of the dinner. It had looked really good too.

Lisa later told me that she and Donald weren't ready for the cake cutting either. Tammy just shooed them along. (So much for that expensive buffet). There was dancing outside after that. Donald and Lisa had the first dance to the song from Cinderella, "So this is love".

The dancing, as well, was cut short.

Donald had asked a friend of his, who did karaoke at this pizza place, to be there as the DJ. He was also hoping for some karaoke, but as I recall that didn't happen.

Well before we knew it (literally. Thank you Tammy.) everything was brought to a close. The carriage was back to carry Donald and Lisa off. The ever bossy Tammy started shouting out orders about what we needed to start doing to get everything cleaned up. I swear you would have thought we were that _itch's employees.

All in all though the wedding had been a huge, wonderful and amazing, smashing success.
And guess what?


They lived happily ever after!!!!!!!