NJ2LA: Pre-Wedding March

Why did I get Oscar a haircut before his Aunt Kaeti's wedding?

This is why.

Well HEEELLoo MIStar KOT-tar!

Remember all those rants I had about the lack of funding of the artists in our schools? We have been sending Oscar to an arts class at the local rec center and he created this gargoyle.

We took a quick trip to the La Brea Tar Pits to visit sweet Noel and Declan (no pictures of course, we were having too much fun -- or their parents were gossiping too much).

Our early March was all about Aunt Kaeti's wedding. Designing programs, searching out tiny tux shirts at local thrift shops, steaming out and whip-stitching cuffs.

Kaeti is my baby cousin. My parents are her godparents; her mom and our mutual aunt are my godmothers. I held her in my arms and fell in love when I was 13 years old, before her christening. Although I was the only girl with an older brother, I never wanted a younger sister, like many other girls. Kaeti has always been my little sister, and even though we weren't in touch every day, we were prickly girls from the same patch.

Texts between me and Kaeti a week before the wedding:

A: Do you want Oscar to wear the shiny tux shoes or are just black shoes okay?
K: I couldn't care less about his shoes.
A: Great! I'll outfit him in scarlet patent platform spike heels.
K: Perfect. He'll match the peacock theme.

We went with black low-topped Chucks. (Every shiny-shod groomsman -- and there were plenty of them! -- came up to Oscar and and professed jealously over his Chucks and Batman fedora. Pictures to come.)

We could have rented a tux for $85. I found this wool gabardine sleek tux on Ebay for less than $50. We hunted up a local tux place for a used tux shirt for ten bucks. The brand-new Chucks tipped the bank at $27 bucks.