On August 18, 2012 (photos), Valerie’s son, Jason consummated his marriage to Ashley on a lovely beach near Newport Beach, CA.

Jason, aged 29 is Valerie’s younger son.  He and Ashley have been together almost non-stop since high school.  They wanted to have a wedding to include only family and they wanted to have the ceremony on the beach.  They settled on Little Corona Beach near the city of Newport Beach, a really lovely stretch of coastline in Orange County about 60 miles south of the city of Los Angeles.

Valerie and I chose to spend the weekend at a hotel near the site for the ceremony.  Jason’s father and his wife plus Roger and Joanne (very close family friends for Valerie and her kids) were also staying at the same hotel.  As a result we had quite a lot of the wedding attendees hanging out at the hotel pool on Saturday afternoon.

(The photo below is of Valerie’s kids, Chrissy, Jason and Timothy.)

They set a 7:00pm start time for the ceremony.  This would give about 1 hour prior to sunset.  This is a public beach so they were not allowed to “reserve” an area in advance.  So Jason, Tim and I arrived at about 6:00pm to locate and occupy an area for the 40 attendees to gather.  There is a relatively steep ramp to walk down in order to access the beach so it took some time to get everyone down to the beach and across a stretch of sand.  The ceremony was very nice and the lighting and setting were really beautiful.

Following the wedding, we all went to dinner at Javier’s restaurant just down the coast between Newport Beach and Laguna Beach in one of their private party rooms.  The restaurant provided a really nice mini-menu of 4 or 5 main dish selections.  The service was excellent and the food was very good.  Everyone had a really good time.

Jason and Ashley are now living near San Diego.  Jason has been commuting weekly to San Diego for his work for the past couple of years.  His employer recently asked him to relocate there since they have work in that area for the next few years.  Ashley was also able to get a new job in the San Diego area to further her career in graphic design.