Wedding by the lake

Briefly, to wrap up our trip to southern New Mexico the last week in May, I wanted to show a few photos of the wedding we went to attend. This is the wedding of Alexandra and Az. Alexandra is the current captain of the Belle Brigade, the speed walking relay team of all women veterans that Alex and I have belonged to since it was first conceptualized in 2019. The 120-mile race is called the Portland to Coast, and runs simultaneously with the much more famous Hood to Coast.

The only other people we knew there were Chris and Erin, who are also Belle Brigade people. Erin has also been a part of the team since the beginning, and Chris has been one of the van drivers. Pedro was a volunteer for the race for our first three years, and is also a Hood to Coast past participant. Naturally, we were there in support of our teammate.

Inside the lobby are displays behind glass that educate visitors about this Apache band and aspects of the land here. I always love coning across Native languages in print for all to see. In 2026, there are people who still do not realize Native American people are still here and still use their own languages.

Alexandra is into fashion and especially into shoes. I don’t know her new husband Az that well, but I see in the wedding that he was fully on board with the fashion and the shoes!

Nearly every person in the wedding party had amazing, colourful, Nike shoes. Including the bride, but we had to ask her to lift the hem of her dress to show us because the skirt was huge and enveloped the shoes.

For fun, the two young ones in the photo above planned the wedding ring carry together. You can almost see the tiny steel-bound suitcase behind the back of the one on the far right. The case was handcuffed to her wrist. When it was time to present the rings, her cousin produced a key and unlocked the cuffs and the case, and the rings were extracted and handed over.

After the ceremony, the wedding party went off to get photos, and the rest of us went inside to wait. When the bride and groom arrived, there were so many hugs and hellos. We had not had a chance to see either of them before the ceremony, so we finally had a chance to wish them congratulations.

We ate until we were full to the gills, then slowly began breaking from the group. Pedro and I had to return to El Paso that night for our early flight. We hugged and goodbye’d everyone, and hit the highways. It had been an absolutely wonderful short road trip in a part of the country we had never seen, and capped off with a long-awaited marriage of two people we have loved for years.