wedding and a family vacation

So there were about  18 of us traveling from various places to Victoria BC, for the sons wedding, not including the soon to be married couple.

Its was quite an experience to get everyones travel plans and itinerary to know who arrives when and the sort of family get togethers we would be having.

some of the occupants of 221 Quebec st

221 quebec st

The majority of us arrived in Victoria on the 10th of August with some uncles and aunts and son no 2 arriving a few days later.  We managed to find this house in the centre of the tourist area, 221 Quebec Street ( I dont know about anyone else, but the 221 in the address had me thinking of Sherlock Holmes...)
 anyway...it had three apartments with 2 bedrooms in each apartment, it became our
base of operations for the wedding party.
basement apartment, was me, sister from Perth, sister from London and her partner and an extra space on the sofa bed in the living room.  the middle unit had eldest sister and her husband, mum, my aunt from Perth and my cousin from Toronto.  Top floor had the wedding couple, their two friends and son no 2.
14 people on 3 floors....

after the wedding .. on to the cocktail reception

My Uncles, mums brothers ( one from Melbourne, the other from Singapore) also made the trip as well as my Uncle and his wife on dads side...
Now its so much easier for Indians to identify the maternal and paternal sides as we have different names for the Uncles from the Mothers side - they are called mamajis and the Uncles on the dads side also have different names, older brothers are called tayaji, and my dads younger brothers are  called Chachaji. I can go on and tell you exactly all the names for the sisters and the grand parents  but then that will really lengthen this post even further,  so  back to the wedding story..

wedding decorations... 

Megs earl grey birthday cake

Wedding day was on the 15th of Aug, which gave us a bit of time to get over jetlag, and do some sightseeing as well as meet the sons, in laws.  My soon to be daughter in law's (her name is Meghan) birthday was on the 12th of August, which gave us a good opportunity to have her parents and grand parents over for tea
and cake.

st ann's academy, victoria, wedding venue with the flowers

We also arranged a BBQ at the vacation rental on 221 Quebec street, on the day before the wedding to meet all the in laws so that Meg's family could  see we were not some strange tribe trying to steal her away.  it was after all an inter racial marriage and I knew that her side had their misgivings on who we were and what we were like.  My uncles, aunts, sisters are all wonderful people who unlike me, are sociable and enjoy meeting people, which helped tremendously to ease everyones fears that Meg was not marrying into some strange traditional Indian family.  We had a blast.  It was supposed to be an afternoon BBQ with everyone leaving by 7pm, we had to chase everyone out by 10 as we were exhausted and we did have a wedding the next day.....
I promised the son that I would not post pics of them on their wedding day but I am posting a few pics that I took, but just not of them....  yet.

I could not however leave the cake out of the pics, it was glorious, and the top tier was gluten free... I did try the gluten cake too though, it was too delicious not to try just a bit...well ok I had a slice.

After the wedding we headed out to Nanaimo, 11 of us ( the uncles and their wives split from us here and went on an Alaskan cruise)  to enjoy the harbour city which son no 1 calls home. We spent a few days  there then we headed onto Vancouver, losing more of the wedding party, who had gone on to maximise their holiday so far away from home.

All in, it was quite an experience, dealing with 4 strong women ( my sisters and me) and looking after mum.  Not something I want to repeat.  While I love my sisters, I doubt I could travel with any of them as we want to do different things and we have become selfish and unyeilding in our wants.

I dont feel any different though... acquiring a new daughter in law, maybe because I dont see Meg as an in law, she is part of the family.  I now have one more child to worry about....

(some of the pictures are dark as the sun did not cooperate with my limited photography and editing skills... more pics on Canada on Flikr... wedding pics will only be available after Son no 1 gives the green light. )