My weekend

This weekend was really long but we had a blast! I got to hang out with my friend Sioux and her fiance Jason, as well as some of their friends, which was nice. I also was involved in helping with the prep work for the wedding, which I had been missing ever since I dropped out of the wedding party due to financial reasons. The ceremony itself was an interesting mix of Christian and Native American traditions, as the bride was Native and the groom was Lutheran. At the beginning of the ceremony, they burned sweetgrass and tobacco to ward off evil spirits and then later burned sage to keep in the good spirits. After the couple said their vows, they did a wedding vase ceremony which involved the couple drinking out of a double necked Native American vase (which was interesting as I had seen them in Arizona and purchased one as I liked the look of it, but didn't know what it was) and then giving the rest to Mother Earth. A little later, the couple also did the wedding blanket ceremony where a traditional Native American blanket, similar to this, was wrapped around the couple to bless their union. The reception was nice as well and we danced to 70s and 80s music. We stayed at the B&B where the wedding was held, which had lovely breakfast. The other nice thing about the trip was our rental car (which we had to get since my car was still in the shop). We got a Toyota Yaris 4-door, which was fun to drive, even though I ended up doing all the driving. John liked it so much he's thinking about getting one, as our new car, once we finish off paying for the Mazda.

It was nice being back in Richmond, as I hadn't been there since Sioux's graduation from undergrad at my alma mater, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) three or so years prior. It made me remember how much I liked living in the area and so I've started to look for jobs there. The main thing is trying to convince my husband that it is not the land of rednecks (like it was in Danville, where my parents lived briefly), but rather a nice mix of North and South. I like Richmond because you can still get sweet tea, but it's not too Southern, or at least I don't consider to be so. Unless of course you count those Civil War crazies that sometimes hang out there, aka guy walking up and down Franklin Street with a giant Confederate flag on Confederate Memorial Day back when I was in school. Yes, it was the capital of the Confederacy at the end of the Civil War, but thankfully it has progressed a bit since then. It's funny because when I was living there during my undergraduate years, I thought it was great if you were married with children but not fantastic if you are single and in school, especially without a car. But now that I'm getting to the point of not being in school, I can see how nice it is to live there, and possibly raise a family. We'll see how things progress.