Good and God Things at My Son's Wedding

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My son Kyle got married this week.  Because of the threat of rain we had to move both the ceremony venue and the reception venue with only hours notice.  Weddings can be crazy anyway let alone moving venues at the last minute. 

The original plan was to have the wedding at 4:30 on the beach at Sand Harbor State Beach, Lake Tahoe.  This is an absolutely stunning place. On a sunny, warm, summer day it is a place hard to beat for beauty.  But the forecast was ominous—steady rain, thunderstorms, hail and high winds.  The forecasts were correct.  It rained most of the day and the beach was a wet mess. 

The day before I wandered into a beautiful church right in the middle of Incline Village.  I waited until after the Sunday service and went to try to find the Pastor.  There were only a few people left and I found a small group of people in a hallway. I recognized one of the guys in this small group and said to him, “I know you….” He said, “I recognized you the moment you walked in….I’m Al Denson.”  Of course!  Al was the guest worship leader at the church that morning and back in the early 1990’s Al worked with Dawson McAllister and we did ministry together at Redwood Chapel.   After some reminiscing I told this small group that we had a wedding planned but the forecast for the next day was terrible and we were looking for a backup.  Al disappeared saying he would go find the Pastor and he reappeared a moment later saying the Pastor would be out of a meeting in a few minutes and it likely wasn’t a problem.

The Pastor did show up a few minutes later and sized me up and said he would be happy to open up the church for the ceremony.   The church is in brand new condition as it had recently been completely renovated.  It was a beautiful place to have a wedding.  I escorted Destiny, the bride, into the church that day and she said, “I can’t believe I am getting married in a church I have never been in before.”  Hilarious.

At the same time, we had a beautiful park-like venue set for the reception.  This location right next to the swanky Hyatt Regency Hotel was perfect—if it was a warm, dry summer night.  If not, disaster!   The reception host had said that if there was rain we could move the reception to “The Chateau”—whatever that was.  Destiny didn’t think much of it because her heart was set on an outdoor wedding and reception on a beautiful, warm mountain evening in August.  “The Chateau” is a very upscale Golf Club up the street and was again, beautiful.  If they had purposely tried to book the golf club for the reception it would have cost 2-3 times as much.  So our reception looked out over a mountain golf course.  Cool! 


God is good.  He provides.  He knows what we need.

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