Edmundo & Lisa Wedding

April 3, 2010 @ Wimberley Texas

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About Us
 
Here you can read about the "how we met" stuff and we'll throw in pirates and some sort of madcap caper to keep it interesting. 

The picture at left is from the very first day we met. We are part of the new generation of those that met spacing out in cyberspace. In our case, it was through match.com so expect to see us on one of those khaki pants wearing, hired actor looking "we just fell in love" commercials as soon as the company recognizes our star potential. 
 
First date from Lisa's perspective:
Our first date lasted nine hours. Which is a personal first date record for me. We met at Pho Saigon in midtown Houston. I was a little nervous that I wouldn't recognize him, but as soon as I walked through the door all 6'5" of him leapt out at me with the biggest smile I had ever seen. He then swept me over to our table where we did the safe "let's just order coffee" thing and started with Cafe Sua Da. Then he started showing me book after book of all his amazing artwork and I was blown away by how good he is. A lot of guys will say they are artists, but few are actually any good. Impressed I was mightily.
 
Jacked up on caffeine, we chatted to the point of starvation and moved on to feeding. The mutual love of pho was revealed and an auspicious start was made. Edmundo then asked me to go to the MFAH to see an impressionist exhibit. What's not to love about that? Then he invited me to take the light rail to downtown for sushi. There were a few interesting drunks on that ride that wanted to be our best friend and they sure were for about 5 minutes. But, our time spent on the patio of the sushi spot was more fun and gave us a chance to stare dreamily into each other's eyes and...OK for the sake of badly affecting your gag reflex, I'll skip over the mushy parts.
 
Second date:
Now for the fun pirate stuff! On our second date he tried to impress me by taking me to eat Ethiopian food. Of course I already have a firmly established love of that cuisine and he was slightly disappointed that he wasn't introducing me to something new, yet impressed that I had gone down that dark alley of spicy yumminess before. (Side note: For great Ethiopian go to Addisaba behind Sharpstown Mall. A little bit of a scary looking location but 100x better than Blue Nile and really great peeps.)
 
Oh yes, back to the pirates. So I decided to take him by my friend Mark's old studio to show him some sculpture or some such artsy thing that I thought was cool at the time. Granted, most starving artist studios are located in sketchy warehouse districts, but no big deal...usually. This night was special in so many ways though!
 
As I'm giddily sharing some silly part of my background with him he suddenly goes from happy smiley to slamming on breaks screaming "F%$& No!" A little taken aback I look up and see a car has sped past us, slammed on its breaks and at least two guys jump out of the car and start walking towards us. Their expressions did not make me think they just wanted to chit chat about joining the church of Scientology -- although also a scary prospect. Edmundo has already done a 180 and hit the gas hard whilst I am still wide-eyed, taking all of this in. As we pass the first intersection, we see another car speeding very fast towards our former location. It was immediately clear that they were planning to cut us off from behind and car jack us. I start throwing instructions on how to get back to the freeway as fast as I can until we finally escape from Jacked Up Alley. 
 
The end result of this story is that we discovered on just the second date how well we work together in a crisis situation. Perfect!
 
"What about the madcap caper?" you ask. Well, I guess you better just show up to the wedding and help us write that story.
Lisa's Background
 
Born in the perilous 'burbs of Seattle, Lisa was always fascinated with fire. So much so that by the tender age of two, the entire family was forced to relocate to Chicago in the dead of a cold winter's night...or maybe it was summer and the fascination was really with ice cream. Either way, Chicago was great as it had the Cubs and blizzards. Lisa was a fan of making snow angels and opening doors where the snow drifts were taller than her.
 
Mom wasn't as crazy about the snow and they moved to Houston in the Spring of 1974, just prior to a major blizzard in Chicago. Since then, Lisa prefers New York to Chicago style pizza and blazing hot sun to backbreaking shovel work in the dirty grey snow.
 
Houston has been home ever since with lots of time traveling / pseudo-living in a variety of other locales, but for some reason Houston just won't let her go and, like struggling against a rubber band, she gets snapped back every time she tries to escape. This is a good thing as she may have never met her amazing and truly unique husband otherwise.
Edmundo's Background
 
Born in Chile, but moved to Mexico right after a coup d'etat that propagated fear and uncertainty for not only my family but to the entire country. Jumping around this very uncertainty, I landed in the most alien part of the world that I could have possibly ended up -- Oklahoma. I finished high school learning English and then to university... well jumping around again through travels and a first marriage that lasted for 20 years... my three wonderful children... nearly killed me... now I discovered who I am... 20's gone... 30's gone and...  40's gone. 

I am ready now for the rest...because my forty's gave me a decade to think about growing old and about the artist inside, as well as realizing that my unique nature is difficult to pair up. I am a father, lover, architect, artist, cook and night owl... in that order.

Houston has been my home for the last 20 years... built a small business of creative parameters... hopefully that will continue to flow.

I am still jumping around wanting to re-live my lost 20's but found out I wanted to do it alongside this unique laughing lady that sees right through me.