Married off the last Mandy!

I wrote a whole post about Ashley & the wedding, and then I realized most people just come here for pictures... so, pictures first, post second! If you're on facebook, you've seen most of these. (I really need to figure out how to upload the pictures smaller so they don't get all distorted or huge, and so you don't need to click on them to see them full size. I'll work on it!)

The tiny plane you take to get to Bimini


Me & my Dad on the way to the rehearsal dinner


Me & Greg at the Rehearsal Dinner


The Mandy/Kern men... My dad is on the left. His brother, the father of the bride, is 2nd from the right. Their height difference helps explain the height difference between me and Ashley in the next picture!


Me & Ashley at the rehearsal dinner


The Happy Couple.


Hanging out by the pool before the wedding.


Me & my dad before the ceremony.


The ceremony. Not a bad back drop for a wedding!


Here comes the bride...


Do you, Ashley, take Justin.... She said yes.

The last female Mandy cousin got married over the weekend! Fortunately, Greg added a wonderful new Mandy to the family a while back, and there's already another little Mandy on the way to re-populate the world with "Mandy's" (let's just hope the baby gets a lot of Jessica's genes!) ;-)

Wait, this post was supposed to be about Ashley's wedding and it's already been commandeered with digs at my big brother... you can tell I must have been around him recently!! On that note, we were in the Bahamas, http://www.biminibayresort.com/ to be exact, last weekend for Ashley's wedding. The wedding was absolutely beautiful, though I doubt I'll be going back to Bimini anytime soon... getting there requires a flight on a tiny 6 person propeller plane... I was the kid who had to be in the "no rollercoasters" group when Camp Saginaw took us to Hershey Park for the day, so it goes without saying that I don't do well on tiny little propeller planes!! BUT, once we got there, it was a great time.

Still hard to believe that my baby cousin is all grown up and married!! I have so many great memories growing up with Ashley... even though we only saw each other a few times a year, we were the only girls in a family of VERY loud male cousins, so during our family get togethers, she and I were never far apart. Some of my favorite childhood memories involve playing with Ash in Disney World (she was too young to remember this), getting excited when Steve and Ash would come up to Brigantine for Passover, and helping her with the 4 questions cause, even though she was the youngest, she was way too shy as a kid to sing them in front of the whole family (lucky for her, she's grown out of that... me, not so much!), and going on the cruise for Grandmas... oy, 70 birthday, maybe? It was my first cruise (Ashley had been on hundreds, even though she was a whopping 10 years old) so when we had to go up to the deck for muster drill, I had no idea what was going on. Ashley explained it to me, and we sang and danced to the steel band playing a song, I think it's called "Sweat" but I know it as the "a la la la la long, a la la la la long long long long long long..." song. When I was 13-going-on-14, my parents sent my out to Aspen by myself for my birthday weekend, and, despite having a horrible experience with a cancelled flight, sleeping in the denver airport, and taking a 5 hour bus the next day, I had the greatest time with Steve and Ash... we ate at Boogies Diner, got matching (hideous, what were our parents thinking) green felt "Boogies Diner" jackets with tan suede arms (seriously, even recalling these things they sound so ugly. I've got to find a picture!), and went to some restaurant for my birthday where all I remember is the lights in the entire restaurant suddenly going out... I thought it was a power failure, but then the restaurant brought out this light up headband, made me wear it, and the whole restaurant sang happy birthday. There's nothing like trying to learn to ski for the first time while watching your 4-years-younger cousin whipping past you without fear!!

Congratulations, Justin & Ashley!!