I Missed the World Cup Final Game Because...

... we had to be at our friends' wedding that started at the same time as the game!! :-(

Well, maybe you wouldn't care, but for me, and for many people around the world who really love and enjoy watching the World Cup this is/was extremely exasperating!

When I found out the date of their wedding (the day after missing the engagement party which my family attended last December) I immediately texted both the bride and groom and told them that they should be aware that they had scheduled it for the day of the final!! How could they do that?

But they didn't care!! :-( And then, they got really, really lucky because Brasil (sorry, I will follow my practice on FB & will use the Portuguese spelling here) was not in the final after that devastating loss.*

We love these friends dearly, though, and because of some complex circumstances (her dad being against their relationship & marriage and not providing any financial support), they needed all of their friends to come together to help them, her mom, and his parents and family so they could have the wedding of their dreams. (she's in her first year of medical school and really wanted/needed to get marry this summer, precisely in the middle of her 4 week break)

So... yeah, not only were we at the wedding, but we and three other families (including my only local Brazilian friend) were "honorary families" and we were actually honored in the ceremony by being escorted by the groom and walking in (and then, immediately going to the cafeteria adjacent to the church to finish preparing the food -- we didn't even get to take photos with the bride & groom! ;-( ).

Sigh... I'm writing all this because I'm really, really exhausted after we edited their reception video until 3 am last night after I'd gone to four stores to buy ingredients to make punch. I was responsible for all the drinks of the reception and I didn't stop spooning sherbet into lemon-lime soda for about 3-4 hours. Sigh...

And I want to sleep, but my husband is watching the game online. An excellent game, a CLASSIC final with Argentina vs. Germany, so of course I'm blogging!

In case you're not aware of it, most if not ALL people in Brasil were rooting for Germany and against Argentina -- isn't that crazy? Brazilians are so "anti-Argentina" that it's almost annoying. The BBC published/posted an article explaining this phenomenon.

OK, I'm all over the place, as always! I want to try to post some photos of the wedding as well as more commentary on the world cup (interesting links), I hope I can do that!

P.S. It was a beautiful wedding and reception (though it was positively exhausting!)...


* I wanted to write more about that, at least share a bunch of links. For now I will just say that during our drive back on Thursday I thought more about the game, felt very very sad and shed a few tears. But my husband told me to stop and said I could only cry SEVEN tears, one for each goal, ha ha ha :-( really dark humor! In any case, I probably did cry only about seven tears, it was a pretty short-lived outpouring of grief!