Anna's first Portuguese wedding

By K.J. Cardinal

Yesterday marked Anna's first Portuguese wedding and she really lived it up.

For those of you who have never been to a Portuguese wedding, it's definitely not your typical wedding. It's longer than any wedding you could ever imagine with more people and more food than you've ever seen.

Out in Ludlow, everyone gets married at the Portuguese club in town. The reception hall is huge... holding well over 300 people and is always jam-packed for weddings.

The ceremony was at noon with the reception immediately following... which goes ALL NIGHT. The reception is so long that they serve lunch AND dinner and the entire time it is OPEN BAR.

It's insane.

Anyway, Anna endured her first such event yesterday with flying colors. She loved the best man's toast because I hooked her up with some milk in a plastic champagne cup and she couldn't get enough of it (pictured above).

With all the people and excitement everywhere around her, Anna obviously had a hard time taking her nap at her usual 1 p.m. time. So, we just rolled with the punches.

Around 6 p.m., Anna was clearly tired, but was having a hard time falling asleep. I went and took her for a ride to get her to fall asleep. We were not more than two-tenths of a mile down the road when she was lights out.

I turned the car around and came back to the reception hall to put Anna in her stroller to sleep. I was a little worried that she would wake up when we walked back into the reception hall with the music blaring, but she was pretty much dead to the world.

She slept for about an hour and when she woke up it was time to get her dance on.

As I've mentioned countless times, Anna loves music and also somehow has a natural rhythm. When she hears a song she seems to know how to bob her head or shake her shoulders... it's priceless.

When Anna first got out on the dance floor she just kind of stood there looking at all these people, probably thinking "What on earth are these idiots doing?"

Once she got over the sight of a bunch of suburbanites trying to dance, she was up for some dancing of her own. She even dared to be in the center of this circle...


Throughout the course of the day, including on the dance floor, Anna took a serious liking to her Titi (Aunt) Lisette. The two were in separable for a while, which was so cute.

Overall it was a great day for Anna. We are so lucky that she is always so well-behaved (as long as she's not overtired) and just goes with the flow. It's such a relief to just know that she can adapt to pretty much any situation and continue to be the cutest girl on the planet.

We have a few more weddings coming up this summer and fall, so she'll be a seasoned veteran on the wedding scene by the time her second birthday rolls around in October.