High Desert Wedding: Part 1

 



The bride as a teenager, standing in front of the Berkeley dorm where her mother and I met in 1970

First swimsuit

Last weekend we made a trek to Southern California to attend the wedding of my friend Debbie's daughter, Libby. 

Debbie and I met in 1970 in a dorm at Berkeley, so we're talking about a 44-year friendship here. When Libby arrived in 1986,  I bought her first swimsuit and started sending a party dress to mark each birthday. When she was a teenager, she visited me a couple of times for a weekend (lots of movies and shopping).

Libby at two in her birthday dress

Now she was going to marry her long-time boyfriend, Francis.  This was an event I wouldn't miss. 

The invitation

So last Friday Jerry and I drove down I-5 (does it get any duller?),  escaping at Bakersfield (which gets the Golden Armpit Award), and then driving through miles of desert to Hesperia, where the Walmart is so big that I thought it was a state prison. This may be the only town on the planet that has a car pawn shop.

Debbie lives 15 miles up the road, in higher desert, on 2-1/2 acres of native habitat, a much nicer place. The wedding was going to be at her house.

We headed there the first night for the rehearsal dinner, which didn't seem to involve a rehearsal, but the food was  very good.

The setting

Things were already set up for the next day's wedding: hanging lights, flags, bales of hay, a dance floor.  By evening, the fierce heat had waned, and the hills loomed close and vivid (and sculptural and bluish).  The bride looked beautiful:

Libby in blue, with her sister Annie

Good food

The sun sank behind the mountains...

...and the lights came on: 



 

Jerry was so entranced by the native flora (Joshua trees and juniper, among other things) that he put out a bug trap overnight, and early the next morning, we left our motel and drove to Debbie's house to collect it:

The bug trap.  Don't ask.

No one at the house was up yet.   I wandered around surveying what was left to be done.

Signs to be posted...



 

...but the porta-potties were in place.

Some chairs set up for the ceremony

 

 

 

The aisle the bride would walk up

 

 

 

 

The sun rose, and we drove back to Hesperia to our motel. 

 

 

 

More to come...