San Diego Wedding Weekend

After my whirlwind weekend in Ventura, I had a few days at work, awaited Matt's arrival from China on Tuesday night, did loads and loads of laundry, packed again, and headed to SFO for a late night flight to San Diego. After a delayed flight, we landed, picked up our Subaru rental car, and headed the one block to our room at the Sheraton in the San Diego harbor. We wondered why we didn't just walk to the hotel after waiting 20 minutes for the rental car shuttle at 1:30am. By 2:30am we were fast asleep and dreaming about our day at Sea World!

Thursday morning involved applying a lot of sunscreen, grabbing a bite to eat, and heading to a day full of Shamu and friends. Yay!!! We caught a couple shows- Shamu, and the Sea Lions- both were entertaining and fun as usual. Matt had booked Dine with Shamu as a surprise so we headed there at noon, ate our fill of a delicious all-you-can-eat buffet, and had an up-close experience with Shamu's friends.

Dine with Shamu

Dine with Shamu

Shamu show

We opted out of sitting in the Splash Zone

Shamu show

After lunch we visited the aquarium and found some strange creatures along with penguins, napping polar bears, sharks, otters, sting rays, and dolphins.

Rock Fish...really? Who knew?!

I didn't even see them at first! 

Lion Fish

Flamingos!

We headed back to the hotel around 4pm to get cleaned up for dinner and meet up with our friends and fellow groomsmen, as well as the groom of course! We decided to visit a Yelp favorite, Phil's BBQ, and arrived to find a line around the building. Well, what else did we have to do? Nothing. So we stood in line for almost 2 hours, caught up, reminisced over college memories, and laughed a lot! We finally sat down to enjoy some awesome BBQ, ate till we were stuffed, and decided to head over to a local bar, The Silver Spigot- a classy San Diego joint. And by classy I mean, "Stay classy San Diego" Anchorman style. After a few pool games we headed back to the hotel for the night to rest up for the following rehearsal day fun.

On Friday the guys got their tuxes, and by the time they arrived back, we had all arrived at the hotel and were ready for some more fun: Tony and his girlfriend Phung, Cody and his girlfriend Alaina, Matt and me, Scott (groom) and his brother Keith. We headed to a deli for some sandwiches and then across the street to Miramar Speed Circuit for some go-kart racing.

Naturally we let the groom win.

Later that evening we got cleaned up, headed to the church for rehearsal, and then to dinner on the beach. Every night Sea World does fireworks at 10pm and we were able to watch them over the water after dinner. A great way to end a great day! Saturday was a non-stop day. We got up, Matt got his hair cut, the groomsmen came to get ready in our room, I got ready in Alaina's room, the guys left in the limo for the church, and the girls (Alaina and Phung) and I got in the Subaru to head to the ceremony. We made an emergency stop at Wendy's after the groomsmen called to say they hadn't eaten all day and neither had the groom. We arrived loaded with happy meals and snacks, dropped the food to the guys, and got our seats. After the ceremony the girls loaded up again, headed towards Balboa Park for the reception, and hung out with friends. I was able to catch up with our friends Forrest and Amanda, and met new friends too. During the reception we had dinner, dancing, and lots of laughter!

So happy to have some time together at the end of the day! 

New friends and fellow groomsmen

Laughing with Tony and Phung

After the wedding we went back to the hotel to grab some snacks at the hotel bar and then headed to bed after saying goodbye-for-now. On Sunday we grabbed a flight back to SFO and arrived home around 4:30pm where Hunter was awaiting our arrival after having a great few days with our friend Bianca (Thanks B!!!! <3) It's been a crazy week but it was a ton of fun!