SMBHD - Makes My Birthday Special

Like a good husband should :)

I took off of work on my bday, and my husband was going to, too. Turns out he couldn't, and he was pretty bummed about it. BUT he came home a little early and had me open all my presents. I'm not one for opening presents early (unlike my brother). I like to save them and open them all at once. Since I was off yesterday, it was kind of hard walking past them all day and not opening them, though! But it seemed stupid to open them by myself when I knew I'd be opening Tim's later so I should just wait until he got home to open them. So I waited... and he came home, and I opened them all! I got so many great presents - British things, green things, guinea pig things (along with other things I'd asked for)... it seems my friends and family know me too well. :)

So what did the hubby get me? A trip to Boston - including tickets to see the Red Sox! Woo hoo!! I'm so excited! Plus, he's never been to Boston and I'm dying for him to see it. Sigh, if I could only convince my mom to move to Boston, we'd definitely live there... (ma? yes??)

AND THEN he "made" me dinner. Remember how he got all stressed out from that ONE time he made me dinner? Yeah. He kept telling me he would "take care of dinner" for my birthday, which I figured meant make it since he was also talking about bringing things home. Nope! Didn't make it, he "made" it! He brought home chicken parm from my faaaavorite Italian market - Dibruno's. YUM. He was like, "You didn't think I'd cook after I got so stressed out last time, did you?" Ha.

AND THEN we went to the Manayunk Brew Pub down the street for some beers on the deck. It also worked out (FOR HIM) that the NBA draft was on... even though I had banned it on my birthday. He's lucky I had beer and scenery to distract me. OH and PS, just found out that Brew Pub has a Photobooth?! I made him take pictures with me. For someone who was in the photobooth at our wedding like 10 times, he claims he hates photobooths. LIES. Although, I have to admit he's not very good at them. Note the same face in every shot - almost looks like I'm in the photobooth with a cardboard cutout. At least he's semi smiling!


AND THEN we watched my new Kenny Chesney concert DVD! I must've mentioned it to him, oh, only a couple HUNDRED times that I really wanted to go to the Kenny Chesney concert last weekend, but it was completely sold out, so he bought me the DVD for my birthday as well and I made him watch it with me. I got to sing it, loudly, like I was at the concert, because it was my birthday and he had to deal with it. :)

OH and also - he got dessert from Dibruno's, too! Key Lime Pie, because I'd told him once that I'd never had it and he thought I needed to have it (since apparently his mum makes a killer one). It was green AND sparkly! :) Oh, and super yummy.

British Husband done good, ya'll.

-C
xxx

Birthday Sparkles

So, they're not EXACTLY what I had in mind when I decided last minute that I NEEDED sparkly shoes for my birthday, but they worked. What I really wanted were these:

via Amazon

Didn't you just hear an angels singing when you saw those? No? Just me? Really?? Oh well. I heart them so bad. I love that they're multi-color sparkles instead of just gold, which is pretty much all I could find last minute at DSW this weekend. It really pains me that I saw these shoes at every Marshall's and TJ Maxx I went to over the winter, and wanted them, but couldn't think of one place I would wear them. STUPID! STUPID! One should always remember that one is entitled to sparkly birthday shoes. ALWAYS. Write that down.

Ok, enough with the shoes. Today is my 25th birthday. It may not be the first 25th birthday I've had (nor will it be my last). I'm forever 25, just remember that. There is no big 3-0 on the horizon for this girl. I'm going to continue to have 25th birthdays since it WORKS. I think the only people who actually know how old I am are those the same age as me, and my mom. My friends who are older or younger never quite seem to know... and I've even fooled myself. I seriously have to count if I have to write it on a legal form or something. I've tricked not only most of you, but myself as well! SUCCESS!

In my 25th year...

~Life in my THIS 25th year is pretty sparkly. No, it's not perfect. I've had to deal with deaths of three loved ones so far this year, and it's only June. I'd like a new job. My husband is stressed out about his. We don't own a house or a nice car. But for the most part I'm comfortable in my everyday life, and that makes me happy, which = sparkly. Some day I will get a new job and we will buy a house (don't really care so much about the car - you know why if you've seen the streets I have to park on). Then I will be SUPER SPARKLY. But for the time being, I'm happy in my life with my husband. I love seeing him occasionally in the middle of the day for lunch, and in the evenings when we get home from work (NOT IN THE MORNINGS). I love the things we do together. I have a permanent concert going partner (EXCEPT HE REFUSED TO GO TO BRITNEY WITH ME). I also enjoy the things we don't do, together - like sit on the couch and watch bad TV. I love how easy it is being married to him, every day. Ok, don't tell anyone, but I smile sometimes just walking around the house when I feel that easiness and that happiness. That's gotta reach my mush-quota for the quarter.

~I've been doing some reflecting recently and had a eureka moment the other day. Holy crap, I'm a grown up. Sure, I've pretty much always been a responsible, mature person, but I guess I just realized there are some things that are more important to me that weren't before, and there are things I used to tolerate that I won't anymore.

~I've realized who my friends for life are going to be. I'm sure there will be additions along the way, but for right now I know who I'll be talking to still in 20 years. It's a comforting feeling.

~I'm trying to just "let things go". It doesn't mean things don't bother me, just means I don't dwell on them because I've realized there's no point. I'm letting go of some of the things that stress me out. I have come to realize that people do the things they do, and there's a certain level of frustration you reach where you realize it's time to stop trying to make them not do those things. Apparently there is a point where screaming and yelling at your brother who just doesn't "get" the world gets you so frustrated that you just don't even want to deal with it anymore. At all. Instead of letting things like this continually frustrate me and stress me out, I'm letting them go or at least settle so that I can deal with them better and not irrationally.

~As we get older, we all change. I think the realizations I've been having are a direct result of me changing. Changing the way I deal with people (or don't), changing the way I view things, changing how I deal with frustrations, changing my general outlook on everyday life. We all will change. Some for the good, some for the bad. The problem is you can't, well, change someone else's change. You have to realize they've changed and they aren't the same person you once knew, and adjust the relationship you have accordingly. I've had to do some adjusting like that a few times in the past couple years.

~I've been trying to eat right, and have been drinking less. I enjoy a good night of drinking, but I used to have a beer or glass of wine every night, and I don't anymore. No real conscious effort to do so, I just don't. I think it has helped my sleeping to be honest (I used to have to take Ambien every night).

~Time has flown in this past year, but I feel like I've grown a lot. I've learned that respecting someone means more to me than I ever knew. I've accepted that things don't happen immediately and you have to wait patiently (OK, I MEAN LIKE NEW JOBS. NOT SPARKLY SHOES. THOSE NEED TO HAPPEN IMMEDIATELY STILL.).

Ok that's enough realizations for me for the year.

Happy Sparkly Birthday To Me!

-C
xxx

Proof That I Totally Should Have Been Invited To The Royal Wedding

SEE - I told you I should've been invited to the Royal Wedding. My mother-in-law was clearly BFFs with PRINCESS DIANA.


They even called each other that morning and decided they would both wear red. Totally besties.

-C
xxx

Birthday Fun

So my birthday celebration was all sorts of fun! I'm so very, very behind on uploading pics to facebook. As in, last night I uploaded pics from NEW YEARS and a trip I took in February. (Yeah. I wasn't kidding.) So hopefully tonight I'll get a chance to upload pics from March to June, including birthday celebration pics. In the meantime, here are a couple to tide you over.

We started off at this cool place called Graffiti bar. It's pretty much just awesome. It's outside (but with a clear roof over most of it), and there's all this bright graffiti everywhere. Oh, and they had $2 foods for happy hour. Yeah, they were small portions, but still. Yummy and $2. ALSO, the men especially loved that in the bathrooms they played looping movie quotes. One of the guys was gone for like 15 minutes just to keep listening to the quotes. Also - how perfect is it that there was this one long table that fit us all? Meant to be.

PHOTOBOMBED!
(By Dave from my CHAMPIONSHIP WINNING volleyball team, not by some random dude. Oh, did I mention we won?? Guess what... we won! Seeded #7 at playoff time. Beat #3, then #2, then #1! Amazing.)

Non photobombed photo.

Shannon doesn't like to look at the camera.

Tim will hate me for posting this. I like to think of it as proof that we're meant to be. Why? Because we're singing Livin' on a Prayer. With gusto. And fist pumps. He swears he's British, but I think my Jersey is wearing off on him a bit...

-C
xxx

SMBHD - Thinks He's Going to Starve

For someone who is A - so skinny, B - used to live off of cereal and deli meat as a bachelor, C - is married to someone who likes to cook (and eat), my husband is apparently, for reasons unknown, TERRIFIED that he is going to starve/miss a meal. He won't admit this, but let me just show you some of the evidence. Just a side note: I make dinner, or decide what we're doing for dinner, every night. Lunches he makes himself (sandwiches), except on the weekends. Then that is also my job. My husband does not cook. Ever. Except one time (and it was actually really good), and he got so stressed out doing it that he vowed never to do it again (although I think he may be planning to cook me dinner on my birthday!). So I cook, he cleans. Works for me. Also, we do 95% of our grocery shopping at Target. Now back to the evidence that my husband is either a secret fat kid, or is scared to death he'll starve.

~When he moved into our place, I had already lived there for about a month and a half. When he first got there, he would make comments about all the food I had in the fridge, freezer, pantry, and baker's rack. He said we could probably live off of it for a year. Fast forward 9 months. Now, when our freezer is anything less than filled to the brim, he has a panic attack. "WE NEED TO GO TO THE STORE, WE NEED MEAT!" he says. Like the apocalypse is coming and we're going to die of starvation if we don't go to the store and buy a pound of ground beef.

~If we're going away for a weekend, he has to plan out when we'll have time to go to Target when we get back or, god forbid, the week after. He used to make fun of me for going to Target every week when he was in the UK and I was here. "What could you possibly need from Target every single week?" he'd say. Now, he's the one with the Target obsession... well, for the groceries at least.

~Before I go to bed at night, he wants to know what we're having for dinner the next day. If I say I don't know, I think he continues to think about it, which then leads to him texting or emailing me multiple times the next day asking if I know what we're having for dinner yet. Which, inevitably, will result in me responding "NO!!!".

~When we plan trips like, say... going camping in JULY, he wants to know what we're going to eat out the wildnerness. I told him we would be hunting and gathering for our food. I'm still not sure if he believed me at first or not, but eventually I got a "No, seriously." and I had to inform him that there are these things called "coolers" and that you pack food and drink in them.

~When we have tickets to a Phillies' game, concert, etc., he always needs to know what we're going to do for food before the event (because we usually leave straight from work and don't go home). Sometimes it's as soon as the tickets are bought (2 months ahead of time), but at the very least it's 2 weeks before the event (except if it's a last minute plan, then he asks immediately). He basically needs to know the food schedule as much as he needs to know any other plans in his life. And if I don't know, he keeps asking, so I've started alternating between a pizza place and a bar called Good Dog. Funny story - we went to Dollar Dog Night at the Phillies' a couple weeks ago, and leading up to it, at least a couple times, he would go, "What are we going to ea- oh, right, dollar dogs." Then he'd get all excited because, yes, they are $1 hot dogs and he wanted at least 3. The funny part is that the question of what we're going to eat must be such a reflex that he just couldn't stop himself from asking!

~When I go away, we have to stock up on oatmeal and mac and cheese ahead of time. From Target, of course. When I return, he whimpers and gives me puppy dog eyes because he missed me had to eat mac and cheese all weekend. I guess that means he likes my cooking!

~He brings snacks when he goes shopping with me and my mom. This is actually valid because my mom is notorious for just not remembering to eat when we're doing something. Usually that something is shopping. Then we'll end up eating lunch at like 3:30 in the afternoon, if at all. The funny thing about this one is just seeing him hop in the car with his little plastic bag of granola bar, chips, and some almonds or something.

Maybe it's the years of living on his own, where he ate cereal, oatmeal, and random other things that men who don't cook eat when they're bachelors (except when they go home for mom's cooking), that now he's like a rabid animal when it comes to food. It's completely unfounded.

He calls me a "feeder", but really, he's just an eater. He's the one who needs to know when, what, where, and how we're eating at all times. But, yet, I'm the feeder... riiiight.


-C
xxx

Bonnie's Wedding Runway

As I mentioned before, Miss Bonnie Quick (I believe she is keeping her name for clothing design purposes), made all of our bridesmaid dresses for her wedding. The dresses were so fun to wear! We each had a different one, but all in the same fabric.

Oh yeah, and she also made our hair pieces and jewelry for us!

The ball is actually a locket. Feathers and whatever those white plant things are, along with hair clips, all purchased at Michael's.

The balls on the necklace are also lockets!

Something you may not know about me is how much I loooove antique (looking or real) tarnished gold jewelry. Seriously LOVE. I was way too happy when she gave us this jewelry!

I also have been wearing it pretty much every day since she gave it to us.

To complete the outfit, she asked us all to wear yellow shoes. I MAY or may not have begged her to do so. :) We all know how I like colorful shoes!
(Mine are the back right below.)

She also made the flower girl dresses! Aren't they cute?

And since sewing awesome dresses apparently runs in her family, her mom made her wedding dress! Ain't it purdy?

Unfortunately I don't have any pics of all us girls (or Bonnie, for that matter!) walking down the aisle because Tim was on parking lot duty and didn't make it back in time for me to give him my camera, so I can't wait to see the professional pics of that!

The lovely ladies from Wedding Tresses (serving Massachusetts and Rhode Island) who did our hair (Jenn) and makeup (Kayla) kept saying that they could totally see this wedding ending up in a magazine because of the unique dresses, hair pieces, etc. Or on a blog? hehe. They were awesome, btw. The makeup looked amazing, and I loved my hair the first time it was done! Yeah, I had to get mine redone because it got messed up (freakin' wind) when I went back to do a couple more set up tasks. Then the hairdresser told me my hair couldn't be as big as it was before if I wanted it to stay. *tear*

Also, today is Bonnie's birthday!

Happy Birthday Bonnie (not) Quick (anymore)!

Unrelated to this post, but it's also one of my MOH's birthdays!

Happy Birthday Ryann!

-C
xxx

SMBHD - Gets Way Too Excited To Go To NJ

We're going, going, back, back, to Jersey this weekend (my mom's house). We haven't been there in a really long time. Like... I can't even remember. Um... well I think I went in April. Tim may not have been at all yet this year! So it's about time for a visit, and we also have to pick up our furry children from Gramma's house. She's been watching them since May 22nd - I haven't seen my babies in a long time! But we were going away and couldn't leave them alone in the house, so off to Gramma's they went.

Yes, I get excited to go home. I get to see my mom, and our dog Boston. I get to go shopping and thrift store-ing and hopefully squeeze in some pool time. I love my mom's house. And spending time with my mom. What I didn't know, was that Tim may even get more excited about going there than me.

When we were originally talking about going to Jersey, my mom and I were going back and forth on whether or not we would go up there or if she and I would congregate in Maryland so I could see all the work they've been doing on Grandude's house, and help out some more as well. Since the moment I mentioned there being a possibility of going to Jersey, Tim has asked me every single day, multiple times a day, if we had decided if we were going there or if I was going to MD (he wasn't too keen on going somewhere labor was involved). He also made it very well known that his preference was Jersey.

When I told Tim we decided on Jersey, he was practically jumping around the room. I can always tell when he's really excited about something. Like when I told him his mom was going to make his chili spicy when she was visiting. "Really?!" as his voice goes up an octave. He doesn't hide excitement very well. So I got another "Really?!" when I told him the choice was Jersey. Now all he talks about is hanging by the pool, watching baseball, and, of course, what we're going to eat - what we're eating and telling me a million times that he wants to go eat at the restaurant that catered our wedding. Eating is his main concern in life in general, so I guess that shouldn't be too surprising. But it's so funny to hear him talk about this trip like we're going "on holiday" to Mexico or something... and like we're going for longer than 2 days. He texted me a few days ago asking if my mom could "make her ham and eggs for breakfast". And then wondered what she would be making for dinner Friday night (tonight). Little does he know, when I go home we don't usually have dinner the first night I'm there either because I don't usually get in til after 9pm or I make it because my mom gets home late from work. Lucky for him, my mom decided to throw something in the crockpot for us. I'm refusing to tell him what it is because it's fun to mess with him. :) All I told him was it's nothing he's ever had before (at least not at her house). That's so that he doesn't pester me with potential meal options for the entire two hour ride home. My mom told me we could eat ahead of time if we wanted since it'll be late when we get there... pssh. Please. Like he'd forego a home cooked meal by either of our mothers. No, no. He will just pester me to get in the car ASAP when we get home tonight so we can hurry up and get there to eat.

via Google Image Search and MS Paint

To me, it's a routine trip home... to him, an elaborate vacation. Although I think part of it is he used to get so excited to go home to his parents' house for a weekend and this is a surrogate for the moment since he can't make a weekend trip there anymore.

Also, this is supposed to be my birthday weekend (since I won't see my mom again until after my birthday), but Tim's making all the demands?? How does that work? Lol.

via Google Image Search

-C
xxx

Outdoor Wedding Tips

Like I mentioned last week, I wanted to share a couple things we learned about planning an outdoor wedding with Bonnie's wedding. You live, you learn, right? And pass the knowledge on!

I think the three main things (and one not so main thing) to tell you about are:

1. Bugs. The wedding was in a field, in the woods, and on a lake. That's gotta be like a bug trifecta or something. I came home with 33 bug bites on my body alone! I'll admit that I am a bug magnet, for whatever reason, so there are probably others that this wouldn't be an issue for. I also will admit that I don't like to wear bug spray, so I kind of tend to let myself get bit until I can't stand it anymore and then I throw on the bug spray. I just hate that bug spray gets all up in your mouth and you smell like it all night! I will usually take a shower before hopping into bed because I hate the smell so much. However, I do like the Off Skintastic wipes because they smell "pretty" (as pretty as bug spray can smell!).

But, because I am a bug magnet, and bugs do... well... bug me (hehe), I felt the need to have 8 million debugging options at my wedding. Or 3. Same thing. We used a lawn bug spray a few days before the wedding, which worked WONDERS. Apparently, since I'm pretty sure not even one of the tons of containers of Off wipes I bought was used up. We also had tiki torches sporadically around the property, which I like to think helped as well. If you want to see some other ways to debug your outdoor wedding, you can check out some options here.

via Google Image Search

2. Wind. As much as you try, you can't have a perfect weather plan. You can have a contingency plan for rain, you can rent heaters if you think it's going to be cold, but you can't always plan for everything. Case in point - wind. When we were hanging the glass bottles around the tent, I wondered if the wind would knock them into each other, but it didn't even cross my mind that it would blow everything off the tables! So note this on your list, future brides, be ware of wind in addition to extreme hot/cold and rain. Picture if you will, the tent adjacent to the lake (not right down on it, but still). The tent walls were originally put up on the back of the tent (furthest from the lake) in order to buffer the sound of the DJ so as to not annoy the neighbors too much. That left the front of the tent (closest to the lake), wide open to the wind coming off the water. We set everything up in the morning, but I guess the wind got worse as the day went on. We were off getting our hair and makeup done and the men were scattering to hold things onto the tables. The tent walls ended up getting moved to the front (closest to the lake) to prevent the wind from coming through, which then changed the layout a bit (of where the placecard/guestbook table and bar would go, along with just where Bonnie had envisioned guests would be entering from).

via Google Image Search

3. Weeds. I know I wouldn't have thought about this ahead of time. Shoot, I probably wouldn't even have thought about mowing the grass ahead of time if I didn't have my neighbor and my cousin talking about all the lawn "designs" they were going to do for me from the minute we announced the wedding! (Side note: the design didn't happen, but I guess at least I didn't have to remember on my own that the grass had to be mowed.) Apparently fields can have these prickly vines running through it. I suppose that makes sense. These bad boys were brutal, though. They pretty much were everywhere and you couldn't rip them up bare handed and once you started pulling the end was nowhere in sight! We didn't realize they would be a problem until people started to trip while setting up. Then we had Bonnie's now hubby and his bro start hacking away at them under the tent. I think they did pretty well under the tent, but outside of the tent was another story. I know they worked really hard to get rid of those, so I'm not knocking the effort. It's a difficult job hacking those weeds, and anticipating where people will walk as well! Especially when the wind changes the layout last minute, and you thought people would be entering a different way. I'm glad no elderly people tripped and really hurt themselves, though, which is what I was afraid of! I think mostly it was just people getting caught and stabbed by the thorns.

via Google Image Search

*4. Pollen. Now, this is something you absolutely can do nothing about, unless you change the time of year you get married. Turns out, according to Matt's dad (who lives on the property), the pollen invasion we experienced over Memorial Day weekend happens for about a week and a half every year, which just so happened to be the week they decided to got married! The pollen was everywhere. And I do mean ev-ry-where. I joked that I didn't even need my yellow shoes because my feet were already yellow! Once you accept that your car, your feet, your shoes, everything, will get coated in yellow, all you can do is laugh about it. It's not like if you go wipe it off it won't come right back!

via Google Image Search
Not picture of the actual pollen this weekend, but pretty darn close to what we saw! It may have actually been worse than that!

So there you have it, a couple more things to think about when planning a backyard wedding! Got any others to add?

-C
xxx

SMBHD - Calls Himself "The Mouse Hunter"

Dog, The Bounty Hunter

Tim, The Mouse Hunter

So, we had a mouse in our house. It's embarrassing to admit, and I have to back it up with we have NO IDEA why it was there. We never leave any food out on the counters or anything, found no trace of it eating any of our chips or crackers or anything whatsoever in the pantry. We seriously pulled every single thing out and checked - NOTHING. We found some poops in various spots, though, and even spotted the little b@stard a few times. BH made me buy 800 different kinds of mouse traps. Or three. Whatever. Sticky, snappy, and mega snappy. Next stop was poison (which I totally didn't want to do, because that would mean we'd have to find it somewhere at some point). Every morning he was like a kid on Christmas. He'd get up, go downstairs, and immediately check every single trap, hoping to find a mouse with a snapped neck. BH would ponder ways to outsmart the little jerk every day.

I'd like to take a moment to clarify why I hated the mouse so much. Obviously, no one wants a mouse in their house. Given. But, like I said, he wasn't eating any of my food or anything. Well, BH is very clean. Like, VERY clean. Very concerned about germs and real, true cleanliness. So this stupid freaking mouse is the reason we had to clean our dishes (we don't have a dishwasher) and dry them immediately (versus letting them air dry, lest the stupid jerk lick them or rub his whiskers on them or something), and the reason I wasn't allowed to leave any dishes in the sink, ever. Yes, I'm lazy and don't like to do dishes. And that's the truth of why I hated this mouse. He hindered my laziness, and our sweet deal of "I cook, he cleans" turned into "I cook, he cleans, I dry and put away and can never leave anything on the counter for more than 30 seconds". BOO.

A couple weeks ago, BH came up with a new plan. He put a snappy trap on top of a sticky trap.

The next morning, he woke me up at 8:00am (ON A SUNDAY) with a huge smile on his face. He woke me up to tell me he caught the mouse, and that I should call him The Mouse Hunter from now on (not doing that). I told him I could just picture him looking at the trap and then pumping his fist in excitement. He confirmed that that actually happened.


-C
xxx

Photos of Dog the Bounty Hunter from A&E, mouse via Google image search, mousetrap via Google image search.

Bonnie's Beautiful Cape Cod Wedding

37 bobbi pins (for my hair alone) +

51 bug bites (33 mine, 18 Tim's) +
4 airport visits +
2 newlyweds =
1 beautiful wedding

That's the math from this weekend. Bonnie's wedding turned out b-e-a-utiful (like I had any doubt). All the little details came together to form her perfect wedding vision that had been pretty much a mystery to the rest of us all along. Sure - I knew the colors, I saw the invites, but even Bonnie hadn't seen everything until this weekend. Including her wedding dress! Gotta give it to her, she was the calmest bride of all time. I think the only thing she was a little nervous about was not seeing her dress, but her mom made it, so I think she had every confidence that if there was something off, she could fix it. And it turned out exactly how she wanted! The weather was amazing, too. Bonnie's HUSBAND kept saying that they couldn't have asked for a nicer day.

They were married on Matt's family's property - a huge field that leads down to a beach. It was about 78 degrees and sunny.

Like with my wedding, I'll post some things to learn from when planning an outdoor wedding, that we learned this weekend. For today, let's just bask in the beauty of Bonnie's Beautiful Cape Cod Wedding. :)

First of all, this was the view from the restaurant where the rehearsal dinner was held.
Right on the ocean. So pretty!

Bonnie's wedding colors were "Capey". Basically that means lots of blue, white, and yellow. She's kind of like me with green, but with blue and yellow. She even had a yellow and blue romper for getting ready. And was finishing each of our dresses off (that she made) while in her bridal hair and makeup!
I'll do a separate fashion post later. Too many pics for just one post!

♪ ♫ Isn't she looovely ♪ ♫

Here is the ceremony site (all in one field, but the ceremony was down by the lake)


Cute programs, right?? Yes, that's a crab. With the letter S in it for her new last name.

Just imagine what a real photographer can do with such a pretty backdrop!

awww

Reception set up


Bonnie's grandmother made each of these centerpieces (they later had a candle on top). She strategically placed each shell inside the jar so that the nicer side was facing out. That's more patience than I'd have! Sand dollars had the table numbers on them.

Here's a close up of the menu and favor (donation to St. Jude's),
so you can see the Capey stripe theme that ran through all of the paper products
(menu, programs, invitations, save the dates, etc.)

Love this idea. Bonnie wanted to hang little bottles along the side of the tent with dried flowers in them. We hung them with hemp at varying heights and with 3 different types of dried flowers. It turned out really cute, and we received a ton of compliments on them!


I made Bonnie a cardbox like mine (but obviously in her colors)!
I think it turned out pretty nice!


Bonnie used starfish as placecards - the placecards were attached to the starfish with a piece of raffia and placed in a picture frame (that we found at Salvation Army) full of sand from the beach on the property.


How cute are the bride and groom birdie cake toppers?? Purchased from Etsy.


Ok this is only pretty because it was delicious.
Dinner was a bonafide clam bake for EACH person. Yum.


Father/Daughter dance. So presh!

More dancing...


Ok from here on out most of my pictures are of drunk people (like my husband).
You don't need to see them all. They all pretty much look like this.

And this.

And this. Although this shows a super fun thing Bonnie decided to do for her wedding. She ordered pizza to be delivered before the end of the night! So good.

Success! Congratulations to my wonderful friends Bonnie & Matt!

-C
xxx