TWO RING BINDS THEM: Natalie and Ryan at the Gage Hotel!

Man! It was incredible. It was like being on a cruise ship in the high desert! Natalie and Ryan had one heck of a party out in Marathon at the Gage Hotel. Just about everyone who was going to be at the wedding came a day early and all ate together after the rehearsal at probably the largest rehearsal dinner I have ever seen. They were so kind as to remember I was a vegetarian and provided me with what I have to consider to be the most amazing plate of food I have ever had. Well, at least until the wedding day. I will be traveling back to this hotel to see what wonder this chef can wow me with in the future!




The day of the wedding a 40 mile an hour wind was roaring around the hotel and in the distance a storm was pounding the hills. On our drive out to marathon the previous day we had encountered a storm like nothing I'd ever seen before. We drove into it and there was so much water falling from the sky that it ceased to be rain and became a raging wall of water driven by the wind to the point that we stopped on the freeway and could not see past the end of the hood. The wind had been shaking the car and I was looking out the window in fear trying to see if I had just accidentally driven into the tornado, but could see nothing so we waited there for a few minutes next to the only thing we could see; a lone road sign shaking and rattling in the wind. After a few minutes the subsided enough for us to start moving again and it is hard to explain how happy I was to be away from that fierce example of just how powerful a storm can be. So, as I looked at the hills on the wedding days, I could only imagine how much they were being brutalized by the storm. Thankfully, the storm never showed up and it was absolutely perfect as the wedding began and a beautiful ceremony.






This wedding was DJ'd by the bride and grooms Ibook and it was great music that kept people dancing until 10 p.m. when the bride and groom surprised their guests with a gigantic fireworks show. These weren't bottle rockets.....The were the big monsters that you see at the city show for the 4th of July. It was a great grand finale to the wedding!