Alex and Ryn’s Wedding

Our third full day in Washington State was Alex and Ryn’s wedding day! They got married at beautiful Swans Trail Farms in Snohomish, Washington. The gorgeous scenery was only enhanced by the scattered Pacific Northwest rain showers we had that day.

Blooms and the Ceremony Site

Torch in the Rain and Bridge

Ryan and I Pose Briefly in the Rain

There were a number of things I loved about the wedding. I was quite a fan of their processional song. They picked No Doubt’s “Running”! They had another great musical selection for the joint Mother-Son/Father-Daughter Dance. They picked “Puff the Magic Dragon”. Unplanned, all the guests surrounding the dancing couples started to sing along. Although a rain shower started during the ceremony, you couldn’t stop the smiles of the bride and the groom and their immediate family. Everyone was so, so happy!

Listening to the Groom’s Parents

The Bride Smiles Despite the Rain

What was most impressive about the wedding was all the handmade work behind it. Alex’s fiance, Ryn, has proven to be quite craftsy. She handmade an American Chestnut Foundation/Port Discover Themed card for Ryan and I at our wedding. With her own wedding, Ryn took on an ambitious endeavor. All the flowers (not to mention invitations and place cards and table markers) would be handmade! Now Ryan and I had a lot of handmade stuff at our wedding…. BUT we had a whole neighborhood of kids on hand to help. Ryn did recruit a number of people across the country to help make flowers (One of my contributions were the Coffee Filter Roses), but I still think the logistics of that is significantly more impressive than walking out on your front porch and saying, “Hey, you! Wanna wrap this in tulle?” : )

Although Ryn admitted at one point feeling overwhelmed by the whole flower endeavor, it came out splendidly. The centerpieces were AWESOME! Each one was a mixture of handmade flowers from friends and family across the continent. They were eccletic, gorgeous and a nice visual representation of all the love for the couple! All the favors (handmade felt flower magnets) were adorable. The wedding party bouquets were unique keepsakes. Even the table napkins were origami lotuses!

Bridesmaid with Two Handmade Bouquets

The Handmade Flower Centerpieces

Lotus Napkin and Felt Magnet Favor

Felt Flowers Line a Bulletin Board Where Guests Mark Where They are From

On top of all that, this event also delivered on my two favorite parts of weddings. Cake (They had NINE different cakes to choose from) and Dancing! Lots and lots of dancing. It was a quite a blast and a very happy day!

More pictures of Ryn and Alex’s Wedding can be found on my Flickr site.

The New York Botanical Garden and The Royal Wedding

The day Ryan and I went to The New York Botanical Garden was April 29th, which also happened to be the date of the Royal Wedding. Ryan and I didn’t watch the nuptials, but en route to the gardens on the Subway, Ryan perused Facebook on his phone.

“Oh boy,” he said, “Everyone is remembering their own weddings today.”

I thought I would be pretty insulated from such nostalgia in the gardens. However, as soon as I entered the American Desert section on the Conservatory, I was greeted by some familiar faces.

Succulents!!!

More Succulents!!!

Naturally, I thought about our centerpieces. I thought about our bouquets. I smiled and just like everyone else– I remembered my own wedding on April 29th. : )

P.S. We still have bouquet and centerpiece succulents growing!

Valentine’s Flowers… Sort Of

Happy Valentine’s Day! I have friends who are getting married in May. Instead of hiring a florist, they have recruited friends and family to help them *make* their flowers. They have all sorts of neat projects in the works– paper flowers, felt flowers, even flowers made out of feathers!

Every now and then I spend some time working on my contributions. Mostly I have been doing five-petal paper flowers, but this weekend I got back on the horse (I had a flop in November) and retried Coffee Filter Roses. I think I’m starting to make progress! Enjoy!

Coffee Filter Roses

Wedding – Cake

I may be intimidated by the likes of linens and flowers. But there is one thing I can get very enthusiastic about wedding planning– the cake. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE wedding cake. At the same time, I despise fondue. What’s the point of ruining the cake just to make it look pretty? When perusing cake vendors, this paragraph on Merrill’s Desserts caught my eye:

Unlike many wedding cakes – made for looks rather than taste – ours are truly delicious. We bake all cakes fresh right here and frost them with a special buttercream icing. They cut and serve easily, and their moistness will delight you.

That put them in the running immediately. One day in September 2009, Mom, Carolyn, Ryan and I drove to Suffolk Virginia to meet Sandra Merrill. We tasted numerous flavors and unanimously confirmed– they were indeed “truly delicious”.

We flipped through design pictures to get an idea of what we wanted. Mom and Ryan were sharing a book and at once they stumbled upon a promising design.  It was a light blue cake with brown branches over it.  The cake also sported leaves and butterflies.

“I think it’s a home run with our venue,” Ryan noted.

SOLD! We changed the light blue icing to light green and that was that. We could scratch one wedding task off the list!

Wedding Cake (Photo by Deanna Felton)

We did three tiers and picked a different flavor for each tier.  For the largest bottom tier, the “grown up” tier, we picked a yellow almond cake.  Sandra mentioned the raspberry filling makes the almond flavor really pop out, and we took her council.

The next largest tier was geared towards the kids.  Before we had met with Sandra Merrill, I solicited some flavor ideas from them.

One teenage boy didn’t have to think about the matter one bit.  “PEACH!” he declared.

“Uh….” I said, “I don’t think they have peach cake.”

“Yes they do!” the boy insisted.

Lo and behold, I didn’t see Peach on the flavor list.  But I did remember grocery shopping with one of the other boys when I let him pick out a cupcake mix for dessert.  He chose strawberry cake, which Sandra did have.  The second tier was strawberry with Bavarian creme.

The top tier was plain vanilla.

At the wedding, the cake itself seemed to go over well. BUT Ryan and I got booed!!! Apparently some spectators were less than pleased with our gentle manner of feeding each other. 🙂

An Unpopular Wedding Moment (Photo by Liza Franco)

I heard a surprisingly large number of people lament after the wedding that they “forgot” to get cake.  My sister, little Malena, my new sister-in-law to name a few.  That concept is so foreign to me.  As soon as I enter a wedding reception hall, I am monitoring the cake status.  When it is cut– I’m all over it, man!  You’ve got to have your priorities!

The loss of those guests was Hunter Street’s gain. Ryan and I had a lot of leftover cake. When we got back to our hotel room and decompressed after the day’s events, our appetites returned with a vengeance and we sat together, reveled in the quiet and feasted on wedding cake… with our bare hands! In our neighborhood, one kid was on punishment and had to miss the wedding. Meanwhile a whole other family was thwarted by a flat tire. Thanks to the leftover cake, they all still got to experience a little part of the wedding.

Ryan and I got to have some sizable extra helpings too! Each helping was as moist and as delicious as the first. In fact, one could accurately say, “truly delicious.”

Wedding Vendor – Cake Merrill’s Desserts, LLC http://www.cakesbymerrills.com 211 E. Washington Street Suffolk, VA 23434 Phone: 757-539-0418

Wedding – Caterer

When I moved from Blacksburg, I expected to miss the mountains. I expected to miss my friends. What I didn’t expect to miss was the food. In Blacksburg, I had a variety of options at my disposal. I’m afraid I took that for granted. When I moved to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, I found myself deprived of past staples. Elizabeth City doesn’t have Ethiopian food. It doesn’t have Indian food. It doesn’t have Thai. As a result, when we do venture out of Elizabeth City, that’s what I want. Ethiopian, Indian or Thai. Or Chic-Fil-A. We don’t have one of those either. 🙂

In the Virginia Beach/Norfolk area, Ryan quickly introduced me to Rajput Indian Cuisine. Absolutely delicious. Everything’s so, so good. I had found my new favorite restaurant. After that, anytime we were in the market for supper in that area, we were most likely going to Rajput.

Rajput – One Taste and You’re Hooked!

When we started down the road for wedding planning, I didn’t make the connection at first… that you could actually have your favorite restaurant cater. We looked through a listing of caterers and reviewed menus and plate costs. Nothing really stuck out and worse– the whole idea of a “real wedding” was becoming more and more intimidating. Linens and flatware and silverware. Oh gosh, don’t forget the cups. That’s a lot of trouble for a meal you aren’t particularly jazzed about.

Enter Rajput and Paul Chhabra. They do full service catering! Suddenly, not only did we have a meal to look forward to…. but we had knowledgeable, unflustered Paul Chhabra in our ranks. Ryan and I didn’t know what we were doing and that was okay because Paul did know what he was doing. He took care of all those details that were so scary– the linens, the plates, the forks, the cups. He had questions we never would have thought of. He had recommendations. He had suggestions. He had answers.

He also had vision. Three weeks before the wedding, Paul and I met with Jennifer Turlington at the Virginia Living Museum for a walk through. At one point Jennifer asked where I wanted the cake table.

“Uh…..” I had no clue.

“What about right there? In front of that painting?” Paul asked.

That’s where we put it. And wow. Our nature themed cake looked so lovely in front of that backdrop.

Cake and Painting

We ended up doing a buffet dinner featuring chicken, vegetarian and vegan options. I was concerned about the children and my boss Larry, so we added in a special selection for the more finicky souls. Greg Z went into the buffet line with a plan. “Save room on your plate.” He instructed his wife, “The best stuff on a buffet is always last!” Greg stayed true to his own strategy. He kept plenty of open space on his plate, only to discover the last item was… chicken fingers and french fries. 🙂

When I arrived at the reception, I could smell the aroma of delicious Rajput food. I saw Paul and I was overwhelmed with gratitude. For months, he had squelched all my worries, alleviated all my stress and then he delivered a fabulous meal. With that, I just had to give my caterer a hug!

Paul and I had another bonding moment. At the very end of the reception as everyone started to clean up, the DJ put on Slumdog Millionaire’s Jai Ho. A young man started to dance and put on a phenomenal show. A small crowd gathered and found themselves mesmorized. Paul stood next to me and we both watched with big smiles.

“That’s my son!” he said. He said that statement with pride. It was well-founded pride.

I truly believe Rajput was the turning point of our whole wedding planning process. I think it is very possible that if Rajput had not come on board, Ryan and I would have ended up with a very different, smaller event. With food to be excited about and all Paul’s expertise, we got to stay calm and relaxed and celebrate with so, so many more loved ones. Ahh, and I got Chicken Tikka Masala and decadent rice pudding to boot. 🙂

Wedding Vendor –Caterer Rajput Indian Cuisine http://www.rajputonline.com 742 W. 21st Street Norfolk, VA 23517 Phone: (757) 625-4634 Email: info@rajputonline.com

Wedding – Pi Favors

Shortly after the wedding, Ryan and I had a number of kids over to walk them through reinstalling their laptops. It was a lengthy process, so we put movies on in the background to provide some entertainment while the various progress bars ticked by. One of the movies we watched was “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”. From the lack of laughter, it was safe to say the movie only appealed to me and me only. There was an exception. Near the end of the film, you can see the family arguing in the kitchen.

“Hey!” I pointed at the screen, “LOOK!”

While the characters were arguing, they were also hard at work…. wrapping wedding favors in tulle.

And that I think was the only part of the movie we ALL got a kick out of. Wrapping things in tulle was a process we were intimately familiar with. In the two weeks before the wedding, Ryan, the neighborhood kids and I made 130 chocolate Pis using ThinkGeek Ice Cube Trays. We then placed 130 chocolates on 130 little squares of purple cardstock, wrapped them in tulle and tied them with a purple ribbon.

Grrr… We Know What It’s Like to Wrap Things in Tulle!

We selected Chocolate Pis as wedding favors because, well, Pi is pretty geeky.  It works with science and nature.  Plus Pi made a cameo in our ceremony.

A perfect circle contains an element of infinite complexity. Like circles, your rings have no beginning and no end and in the sacred tradition of marriage, rings have come to symbolize eternal love and the endless union of body, of mind, and spirit.  The circle, like marriage, was created to be forever, and endless. Just like the number “PI”  a number that goes on without end.  To quote Lisa Hoffman, “Marriage is like PI – natural, irrational, and VERY IMPORTANT.”

Interestingly enough, the Pi Chocolates had a lot of male contributers. Khalif and Tyrek helped squirt chocolate in the molds. Tyrek cut up purple ribbons. Khalif, Armani and Ryan all helped wrap.

Here’s another surprise. While Khalif, Ryan and I all struggled at tying the ribbons, Armani, who had seemed to be pretty indifferent about the wedding, waltzes in and puts us all to shame. He was by far the most effective wrapper! His innovation– twisting the tulle before tying.

Growing Inventory of Wrapped Pis

Chocolate Pi at Wedding (Photo by Brian Nenninger)

Opportunity for Improvement
Our little Pis were cute and fitting, but there was an opportunity for improvement. When shopping for chocolate, I noted that almost all the selections included partially hydrogenated oils. That did not please me. So we used some Baker’s “Dipping Chocolate” instead.   It didn’t contain partially hydrogenated oils, but it melted a lot easier than the other chocolates.

This melting issue turned out to be a source of stress for me. The day before the wedding, Ryan and I loaded up two vehicles full of wedding stuff and headed up to Chesapeake Circuit Court to get our marriage license. It was a pretty warm day and as we headed into the Circuit Court, I was conscious that our vehicles would warm up. I was concerned. LUCKILY, that ginormous white wedding dress with its incredible amount of layers—- it made for perfect insulation! The chocolates not only survived that stop, but they also survived a late lunch as well.

My cousin Sam and my brother’s girlfriend Jacklyn were both helping with the wedding setup. I warned them about the easy melting. They knew to hold the little tulle contraptions by the top as they set the tables. And I do remembering mentioning to more than one person at the reception, “When you decide to eat your chocolate Pi, eat it fast!”

Alas, there was still a mishap. My friend, Tony, decided to put his chocolate Pi in his pocket to save for later.

Yeah, that didn’t quite work out as planned. He ended up with a pocket full of melted chocolate. 🙂

So the improvement I would recommend is to select a chocolate that wouldn’t melt when exposed to body heat as easily. 

Wedding – Lowell’s Lecture and the Father Daughter Dance

When I was a young girl, one lesson my father frequently reprimanded me on was the value of commitments. “You can’t renege on a commitment!” he’d bark at me, “You can NOT renege on a commitment!”  This usually happened when I was trying to get out of a bridge game.

I was married before and when that marriage disintegrated, I returned home to stay with my parents. Although I can look back now and see with clarity the correctness of my decisions, it was extremely tough at the time. I cried almost all of the 250 mile drive to Occoquan. And when I finally arrived at my parents’ home, my stomach sank before I walked in the door. Here was this giant commitment getting reneged upon. What commitment could be more important? Most certainly, I would be disappointing my father. I braced myself for the loud opinions that were to come my way.

And I got lectured… but not about commitments. Dad expressed some strong feelings on the importance of happiness and how it isn’t something to forfeit. I cried and cried and cried.

“You only live once,” he said, “You’ve got to do what makes you happy. You’ve GOT to!”

On more than one occasion, Dad would pause his lecture and look at me absolutely dumbfounded. “Why are YOU crying?!?” To him, the situation was so clear-cut. My sadness baffled him.

I would still have internal conflicts and doubts to come, but Dad’s reaction helped immensely. I understand now why he was so opinionated. It’s so easy to see just how much happiness I had been forfeiting.

Since my sophomore year of high school my father always seemed pretty oblivious and indifferent of the comings and goings of my boyfriends. When Ryan Somma came along, my father took an unprecedented interest. And sometimes his attention was a little… awkward… like the time Dad started to grill Ryan with questions.

“Why do you have tattoos?”
“Do you go to church?”
“How are your finances?”
“Do you have a retirement fund?”
“How much is in your savings account?”
“Why did you get a divorce?”
“Did you cheat your wife?”
“Did she cheat on you?”

But then, there were the pleasant surprises.

“Vicky looks so happy,” my father reported to my mother one Thanksgiving, “It’s like night and day.”

Or the time Dad brought out his cellphone and snapped a picture of Ryan and I. He evaluated his work on his phone and smiled. “I had to get a picture of the happiest couple I know,” he explained.

When Ryan proposed, I had a rare occurrence show up in my email inbox. A very sweet, sentimental message from my father. He apparently still felt strongly about happiness. In an eight sentence email, he referred to it four times.

When you contacted me about your last marriage, I could only give general guidance. My advice to you then was that you only live once, and that you have to make the decision what would make you happy. When you are with Ryan I see just happiness. I like Ryan. Forget about the financial background check, as I suggested. You picked the perfect person for happiness. I greatly endorse Ryan to be our to-be-son-in-law. He is a very great person who will give you happiness for the rest of your life.

Lowell

When it came time to pick a song for the Father Daughter Dance, I selected an accoustic cover of Stand By Me by Jonathan David. My father was by no means the only one who supported me during my divorce. But he was the biggest surprise. I’m where I’m at now and as happy as I am in part because my father knew what was important and stood by me. I certainly hope I can do the same for him.

At the wedding reception, when my father and I stepped out on to the dance floor, the sentiment was much different than the night I was lectured on happiness. No tears were shed and actually there was very little dancing. Instead my father did what he does best– in his animated manner, he told me funny stories.

I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Dad Cracking Me Up (By Liza Franco)

Wedding – The Pink Daisy Blanket

In recent years, I was exceedingly lucky to have a number of supportive loved ones who helped me make my way to Ryan Somma. One of those individuals is my friend Ann. When it came time for my wedding, I wanted to thank her for her contribution to my happiness. All the laughter she brought me with her stories and observations. The times she let me galvanize my resolve by listening to grievances she had heard dozens of times before. And most of all, the times she made me field tough questions– the kind whose answers are hard to say aloud even though they are surprisingly common-sense.

At Ann’s wedding she designed and constructed handbags for each of her bridesmaids. Her creations proved to be so popular that after her wedding, Ann was able to build a business off of her designs. I decided even though the bar was high, that I would like to hand make something as well. I don’t sew and I know very little about handbags. I can, however, crochet.

Pattern
Ann loves daisies, so I scoured the Internet for a daisy crochet pattern. That’s when I found Krochet Krystal. The site shares a free pattern for a beautiful daisy square. There’s a small (and uplifting) catch! In return for the pattern, you are to crochet at least one square and mail it back. The squares are sewn together and donated to hospitals and charities in the Buffalo, New York area. The effort has quite an impressive following and daisy squares have been mailed in from all over the world!

Colors
For colors, I chose black, a light pink and a bright pink. My inspiration for the color palette is drawn from one of Ann’s own classic handbag lines.

Color Inspiration from Handbags

Construction
I started the daisy effort in November 2009. Now my recipient was Ann. I didn’t want to just turn over anything. I had to practice first! I made seven daisies in blue. Once I was satisfied I had the hang of it, I moved on to the pink.

The daisy blanket proved to be the most extensive of all our wedding DIY projects. Even near the end of the daisy effort, each square was still taking me between one and two hours. I needed forty and as time ticked by, I had to squeeze in daisy making whenever I could. I worked on daisies while we watched TV (but never during Lost– Lost required complete attention). I worked on daisies in the car. I worked on the daisies during ZJ’s Super Bowl party. I even worked on a daisy on the floor of the Virginia Air and Space Museum while I waited to see Avatar in 3D IMAX.

Working on a Daisy Waiting for Avatar 3D (Photo by Ryan Somma)

Despite all that diligence, it wasn’t looking good. So I recruited the most prolific crocheter I know:

My mother!

Crochet is like breathing to my mother and still tried and true, she volunteered to take on the less fun part. When I finished a batch of squares, I shipped them to Occoquan. Mom would weave in the loose ends, surround each square with single crochets and stitch them together. We would send pictures of our work back and forth and it was exciting to see everything come together through team work!

Alas, Mom and I still fell short of the March 20th wedding date. We had 30 daisy squares completed and 20 of them sewn together. But it was enough to present to Ann and give her a preview of what’s to come.

Final Afghan
This past weekend, I met Ann in Blacksburg, Virginia for her birthday. I was able to hand over a pot of a succulents from her bouquet (which are still growing!) and…after seven months– the pink daisy blanket!

Finished Blanket

Closeup of Squares

Blanket in Use

Ann and I live eleven hours away. While I worked on the daisy blanket, I couldn’t help but think about why I was working on it. I relived happy memories and thought about all the reasons I had to be grateful for the friendship. Now that the blanket is finally done, I do believe I’m going to miss working on it. 🙂

Wedding – Meteorite Rings

The Rings
A large number of Google image searches were involved with our wedding ring decision. “Science rings”, “science bands”, “nature rings”, “tree rings”, “tree wedding bands”, yada yada yada. But it was a late night search on Etsy, not Google, that nudged us in the right direction.

We ended up with titanium rings with inlays of meteorite!

The striations present in both rings are known as “Widmanstätten pattern“– it’s unique to meteorites and caused by the temperature changes in their journey.

We purchased our rings from a company called Titanium-Buzz. The inlays are from a meteorite that was discovered in South Africa in 1838. The meteorite itself is estimated to be 4 billion years old.

Well before we started to search for actual rings and had any idea there was such a thing as a “meteorite ring”, Ryan already had some ideas for the ring ceremony. He wanted to embrace just how old and how far the elements that comprised our rings had traveled.

Your rings are circles and a circle is the symbol of the sun, the earth, the universe, of wholeness, perfection, peace and unity. It is forged from elements that were created by a supernova. This means that the metal in these rings has traveled billions of years through time and billions of light-years through space to be here on earth today. And now they will become a part of the both of you.

At the tender young age of 4 billion years, the meteorites in our rings are a “contemporary” example of that concept.

The Ceremony
During the ceremony, we did experience some difficulty with Ryan’s ring. It didn’t want to go on! After admiring Ryan Somma for nearly 17 years, I wasn’t about to be foiled by a little friction. I summoned some more umph to my effort and the ring found itself where it should be.

Such a victory should not go by without fanfare.

“ON!!!!” I declared and pointed at the defeated ring.

I was sufficiently intimidating. That small circle of titanium and meteorite hasn’t ventured off since. 🙂

Wedding – Venue

The neighborhood kids, obviously, have become quite important to Ryan and I. So when it came time to plan our wedding, we knew we wanted to keep the festivities somewhat local so it would be easy for them to attend. We looked at two venues within walking distance of our house. Both were quite lovely, but didn’t really have much personality. Nothing that really spoke out as us. Plus with both venues, we would have to fool with renting the likes of tables, tents and chairs.

For his science blog and his science-themed Flickr PhotoStream Ryan routinely documents museum exhibits. One such museum was Newport News’ Virginia Living Museum. Ryan spoke quite highly of it and lo and behold, their website had plenty of resources and information about Facility Rentals. One weekend in August, we made a trip up to scope it out together.

Snippets from our August Visit to the Virginia Living Museum

The museum was gorgeous — full of native flora and fauna. It was educational– interesting quotes, history, explanations and trivia were ample throughout. Within its walls, the curators managed to married together the wonder of science and beauty of nature.

It was perfect!

Ceremony Site
There are a number of rental areas to choose from– including a waterfall and planetarium. We chose to have our ceremony on the back deck facing the Coastal Plain Aviary. We ended up with perfect weather (sunny, 74 degrees…in March) and the perfect spot. The waterfowl were out and about and a heron even flew down and landed in the trees during the ceremony.

Ceremony Setup (By Deanna Felton)

Duck Loiters After Ceremony (By Tony Airaghi)

“Our” Heron From a Distance (By Deanna Felton)

Reception Site
For the reception, we chose to have it in the main floor of the museum. We didn’t have to rent any furnishings! The Virginia Living Museum provided all the tables, the chairs, and even a dance floor.

Museum Provided Tables and Chairs (by Tony Airaghi)

The ticket sales area became an instant bar with aquarium backdrop.

Bar (Photo by Tony Airaghi)

With rental, the guests would have free reign over all the exhibits in the main floor. This included the touch tank, the human sized turtle shell, and the live three legged sea turtle. There was plenty to do and so much to see and get inspired by.

Habitarium (by Deanna Felton)

Britt Gets Spotted (Photo by Becky and Vic)

Sea Turtle (By Deanna Felton)

Sharks! (By Deanna Felton)

Kirsten Poses in Turtle Shell (Photo by Jason Akira Somma)

The Owl
To top it all off, the museum arranged for a volunteer to bring out one of the rehabilitated animals for everyone to see, pet and learn about. That meant an adorable one-eyed screech owl attended the reception! I even got to pet it before it retired for the evening.

The Owl That Attended Our Reception (Photo by Nicole Z)

And one of my favorite shots of the whole event:

Neighborhood Kids Visit the Owl (Photo by Deanna Felton)

Staff/Volunteers
I can not speak highly enough of the museum event coordinator Jennifer Turlington and the museum volunteers. We had a great deal of chaos in the final moments leading up the ceremony. Both the rings AND my father were independently lost (my father would get misplaced a total of three times that evening-hehe). Armed with walkie talkies, the museum staff managed to locate them both and get them to their proper spots.

When we started to walk to the ceremony site, we discovered a walkway was gated and locked.

As we waited behind the scenes for someone to arrive with a key, Jennifer noted that I was the most laid back bride.

“At the end of the day, I’m still going to married to that wonderful man out there,” I pointed out.

But another contributing factor was definitely, definitely the museum staff. I had them around to fret and handle the crisis for me. So while they dealt with locating keys, my side of the bridal party got to enjoy fresh air and spy on bald eagles and wolves. Ryan’s side got to hang out with the otters and my father and I got to disagree on whether or not a tree was a red maple (Obviously I was right– I was the bride).

Downside
Apparently there is one downside to having such a kick-ass venue. My brother-in-law and sister forgot to eat their cake and their chocolate Pi favors!

“Mistakes were made.” Clint explains on Flickr and then concludes, “Too many distractions in that museum!”

🙂

Wedding Vendor – Venue Virginia Living Museum http://www.thevlm.org 524 J Clyde Morris Blvd. Newport News, VA 23601 (757) 595-1900