THE Wedding

Hello Everyone!

Well, as promised, I am going to share a bit about my niece's wedding.  I know, I'm only 2 weeks behind.  Wow, has it really been 2 weeks since she got married?  We really do miss her around here but it has been so busy that the time has flown (hence me taking so long to get a post up about the whole thing.) ;)

She got married in the yard of her cousin.  This is the second time a wedding has been held here so we were kind of familiar with the lay of the land as it needs to be for a wedding.  This one was set up differently but we still used some of the same branches to hang things and such.  I kept hearing myself say, "Remember at T's wedding how we tied it off here?" or "hung it from there?" or whatever.  Anyway, we started doing a few things Friday night that we knew would weather the cool damp night.  Then it was up early Saturday morning to get the rest finished up.  I could really make this a long play-by-play but I will spare you the details.  Besides, this was two weeks ago and I kind of forgot everything we did in a play-by-play way. ;)  So, I will just show you a few pictures and caption them underneath.  I might throw a little narrative in once in a while just because I'm kind of like that and enjoy over-explaining things! ;)

This is the start of the set-up.  We had a big tree to use as a backdrop.  She wanted tulle used as "curtains" to separate the background woods from the wedding site.

This is my trusty helper, aka: husband.  I did some directing from the ground as he scaled the heights of the ladder to get the tulle just right.  I will explain the sign on his back later.

The flowers were done by another friend.  After we got the tulle up, she came and assembled the center piece.

From a distance, the is what the front looked like.  We had to battle a bit of wind but it did settle down by the time the wedding took place.

OK, the sign on my hubby's back.  We both had one.  It said, "Weddings R Us".  This is a running joke between my niece and me.  Every time she would call to ask a question on the wedding or to tell me something she found or wanted, I would answer the phone with some business like response.  "Hello, Weddings R Us, how may I help you?"  or "This is your wedding consultant extraordinaire, how may I assist you today?" or some other such thing.  So, for the big day of set up, I thought we'd wear signs to remind her of our fun of the last few months.  There were a few who got pictures of the both of us and our signs but I have yet to see those. Anyway, signs explained.  On to more pictures.

This was a little cabinet that I picked up to redo for my house and never got around to it.  We were looking for something to place the water container on and this cabinet came to mind.  We did a quick paint job and added a little wedding accent to make it stand out a bit more.  Then water with lime was served from here.

This was the center of the reception table.  Sad to say, I never got a shot of the whole area.  We had two round tables on either end of this long table.  On either side of the candle center area was a punch bowl with a coffee drink and the other was pitchers of milk.  Milk you say, wait until you see the groom's cake and you will understand.

This was the bride's cake.  She loves Rice Krispy Treats, wanted something different and was on a tight budget.  This fit the bill.  It turned out really neat and everyone enjoyed something different.  Let's face it folks.  How many of us actually love wedding cake anyway?  All that gooey, overly sweet icing. Yuck!

The Groom's cake.  OREOS!  What doesn't go better with oreos than milk?  I do wish we would have come up with a topper for this cake.  I don't think either one of us thought about it.  Anyway, everyone enjoyed both the cookies.  I don't think anyone missed the traditional cake.

Here is a close-up of one of the candles.  We came across this idea on Pinterest.  We used split peas to get the green color added.  They turned out just like we envisioned. 

This was a special table dedicated to the bride's birth mother. She passed away of cancer when my niece was just a little girl.  She wanted to remember her mother and the special place she had in her early years.  I thought this was too sweet.  

Here is a picture of her with her mom not long before her mother died.  Pink was her mother's favorite color so even though it didn't "go" with her wedding colors, it honored the memory of her mother.

On the bottom of the little table, was a picture of her mother in her wedding dress.  

This is the area we set up for people to drop their gifts and sign the guest book.  It looks a bit jumbled now.  I didn't get a picture of it before all the gifts arrived.  There was a little bench that a friend and I recovered along with a chair that held the chalkboard. 

This is what the chalkboard said.  This was also a Pinterest steal borrow.  

This was by the road pointing the way into the yard.  There was a parking lot up the road that we used for most of the guests and this was just a help to point the way.

Over all, the wedding went on without any major hitches which is always a good thing.  Wedding set-up is a bit stressful and nobody wants to deal with last minute catastrophes.  We did have a couple of "hiccups" but it wasn't anything we couldn't handle quickly.  For example, the table cloths that came with the round tables were not the right ones.  They were oblong instead of round.  It was too far to go exchange them at the rental company so we just did a little tucking here and pinning there and made them work.  Also, we had some Chinese lanterns hanging from some walnut trees.  So? You say.  Think fall and walnut trees.  Yes, a few dropped down and did a little ripping.  Fortunately, the way we tied off the lanterns was easy to drop the one down and add a bit of packing tape and then pull it back up into place.  They were so high up that you really couldn't tell.  Later another fell.

It made a perfect basket through the top and then got stuck in the bottom.  No damage was done to this one.

Anyway, all very fixable issues.  The wedding was beautiful, the weather was beautiful, the message of the minister and the music was beautiful. Did I mention that it was beautiful?  Thought so. ;)  Anyway, I feel like I wouldn't do you justice if I didn't leave you with at least one of the bride and groom.

The happy bride and groom.

I also posted a picture of the bride's little sister who was the flower girl here. I love that picture and entered it into a photo contest.
Well, this has been a rather long post.  Just be happy I didn't show you all the pictures I took. (187)  Sadly, I didn't get a picture of my family while we were all decked out in our wedding finery.  I guess I was too busy taking everyone else's pictures. :(

Boy, I'm glad I finally got this post out of the way.  Don't get me wrong, it's been fun but I have lots of other things to show but I felt like I couldn't do it until I posted about the wedding.  Because, ya know, I promised. I kind of like to stick to my promises.  So, stay tuned for more to come. Until next time...

Have a blessed day,

maggie jane