Last year at this time I posted a photo essay to share with my WOW readers the privilege I had in attending a large wedding celebration in the countryside here in the central mountains of Mexico. (Scroll down to SEARCH THE ARCHIVES and type in “A Country Wedding” to see that event.)

This week, in contrast, I was privileged to attend another joyous Mexican wedding celebration, this one being in my adoptive home city, San Miguel de Allende, when Luis Andrés, the beloved son of my Spanish maestra, Edith, married his sweetheart, Diana.

This celebration was held in the central banquet hall of the traditional Mexican restaurant Los Milagros on Relox in SMA’s el centro. (See their website for more on them:

www.restaurantlosmilagros.com .)

After a brief civil ceremony elsewhere, the happy newlyweds arrived at the restaurant, where over a hundred friends and family members greeted them and they posed for countless cameras.

To the music of a crooner playing at an electronic keyboard such romantic favorites as “Bésame Mucho,” the guests took their places at the banquet tables.

After expressing their personal vows to each other in the presence of the guests, the newlyweds were “lassoed” with a large loop of beads in the shape of a figure eight, meant to symbolize the love that will bind them as they share their married lives.

For the meal’s first course, a hearty tortilla soup was served – the tastiest tortilla soup I’ve had so far in Mexico:

The main course was steak molcajete, which the man on my right, Edith’s brother, explained to me dated from Aztec times. This dish – served in a sizzling-hot volcanic-stone mortar, also called a molcajete — was a mixture of beef strips, nopales (cactus paddles), fresh cheese, roasted chilis, roasted onions, and salsa verde (green sauce), served with warm tortillas.

And what is a wedding reception without a many-tiered wedding cake?

Near the wedding cake’s table, Edith’s mom, the groom’s abuela (grandmother), and I hugged. I felt embraced by this large and loving Mexican family.

While Edith, proud mother of the groom, glowed: