The Wedding, part I

My brother got hitched on Saturday, and it was the event of the summer.  To quote Seinfeld, we had six days of "festivous for the rest of us."

My dress was finally finished at 7pm on Monday night....two hours after the seamstress "officially" closed.  It was 3 days late, and took three phone calls to get it, but it finally fit me! She felt so bad that she gave me a HUGE discount.

I cashed in my free pedicure and decided to go with the french manicure, despite my husband's protests.  When I got home, he thought it looked like I needed to cut my nails, and my dad didn't like the look either.  But what do they know about high fashion?  After all of that drama, someone ended up stepping on my big toe at the rehearsal dinner and ripped the toenail halfway off anyway.  I ended up having to cut it off.  Then, because that nail was so short, I ended up cutting the rest to match it.  Then I painted them pinkish orange and went with it! 

 On Wednesday, I arrived at my parent's house and was promptly put to work greening centerpieces in my mom's craft room.  My mom is a florist and had a daunting amount of preparations to make for the wedding.  Stepping into her refrigerator-cold shop from the 113 degree backyard was slightly shocking, and required a sweater. 

That evening we attended a barbecue at my brother's house where our whole family met the bride's whole family.  I forgot my camera, therefore, there are no pictures of that night.....but I will say this....there were lots of hugs.  I thought I would never remember every one's names, or how they were related, but by the end of the weekend, I had most of them down.  Her family comes from "the far east" as they call it, and their Jersey accents are AWESOME! 

On Thursday, we went to the airport to pick up my Aunt and cousin from Quebec, Canada.  Here's a picture of part of the welcoming committee waiting for the plane to land.

We did a bunch of shopping on Thursday.  I was on a mission to buy a pair of panties that represented my personality for the bridal shower that evening. It was a lovely little party at a swanky Scottsdale Resort.  I thought cow print would be cute, but I could only find exotic prints like leopard, zebra, giraffe, and cheetah. In the end I decided to go with a pretty little lacy pantie and I added the tiniest silver charm below the bow that had a cowboy boot with a spur attached.  She guessed it right away!

On Friday I was able to spend some time getting rid of my farmer John tan, and my cousin and I picked up cakes, cookies, and more flowers for all of the festivities.  We delivered several loads of decorations to the reception site, and then got  ready for the big wedding rehearsal.   I'll tell you more about that in my next post!