"Goin' to the Chapel"

Well the big day has finally come and gone. After hours of preparation and countless trips to pick up guests from Newark Airport, we are now officially Jeyson and Stephanie Braun! It is impossible to capture in a single entry all that has happened in the past few weeks, but here is our best shot.

In the beginning of December Jeyson's family, Jonas, Iria, and Lika Braun, flew in from Brazil to spend several weeks with the Ciotta family before the wedding. It was such an exciting time because our families had never met before.

The Brauns had never been to New Jersey before, so there were so many new places to take them to show them around. We went down the the shore area (even though it was SO cold!) and up towards New York. We introduced them to NJ/NY style pizza and of course put them to work on some last minute wedding prep. We had a lot of fun and especially enjoyed spending Christmas together. The picture here is of our Christmas dinner. (left to right is Stephanie, Jeyson, Jonas, Iria, Lika, and Bruce). We had Chinese food for Christmas...a little unusual but we all loved it and and with the wedding in 4 days easy was just what we needed!

After Christmas, each day new family and friends arrived in town. Stephanie's siblings came in from Virginia and South Carolina and Jeyson's brother and his wife came from California. It was so fun to all be together! There was so much to do, but we made sure to just enjoy the moment too knowing it is unlikely we will ALL be together again anytime soon.

The day before the wedding was such a crazy day - this was the day to tackle all of the behind the scenes tasks. Then we had the rehearsal and a very casual dinner of pizza back at our house following the practice. Wow, you don't realize how big your family is until they are all in one kitchen! It was definitely a bonding experience!

The next morning of course was the wedding. It really was such a special day for us and so beautiful to make a lifelong covenant in front of everyone who means so much to us. One of the most meaningful parts was having our fathers come up with us and bless us.


After our wedding we went on our honeymoon. With so much going on with support raising and family coming in town, we decided to go with an easy honeymoon that involved no planning - a cruise. Stephanie loved the idea of beaches and and Jeyson loved the idea of the all you can eat buffets :) We left on a cruise from Bayonne, NJ and went to the Dominican Republic, St. Thomas, and Puerto Rico. It was so relaxing to just wake up each morning at a new destination without having to worry about traveling. Each destination was so unique and we loved trying different foods and activities like snorkeling and hiking. There was so much to do on the huge ship (almost 5,000 people including the crew!). It would have been impossible to do everything.

We came back to "real life" on Sunday and have a lot of catching up to do. Stephanie finished up her job before our wedding so we are both focusing full time on support raising and preparing to leave for Brazil. We will be traveling to Virginia and Illinois, speaking at several churches and meeting with missions committees. Please pray for us as we travel and continue to raise the funds we need to head to the field.