Oh so much fun!

I love weddings. They are so much fun and at the expense of being all Hallmarkish - it is so nice to see a wedding truly about the couple & their families getting together to celebrate.
I'll back up a bit and re-cap for you & I'll probably post some pictures later on this week.
My cousin lives in Atlanta and is a medical student at Emory - her husband (!) is a civil engineer in Atl also. They met at GA Tech a few years ago. My cousin and I were partners in crime when we were little & although we don't each other as much as we should now, we have some great memories from childhood and visiting each other through the summers. She is an extremely intelligent woman who is a driven student and doctor. She had a test on Friday, a few hours before her rehearsal dinner!!! Yet, her personality is very laid-back and relaxed, honestly the anti-bridezilla. Needless to say, she did not have the time to plan an elaborate wedding - but I'm thoroughly amazed at what she did - it was a gorgeous wedding. She planned all the events in one park (Piedmont Park, downtown) which reminded me of Central Park & was so helpful for all of the guests who weren't familiar with the city. They had the rehearsal dinner at the Park Tavern - it was a dinner for about 100 people under a tent with Chinese paper lanterns & gorgeous green centerpieces. It was a good size gathering and got people to mingle before the wedding. By the way, she got Perfect weather this weekend too - warm & sunny! Then we had hair appointments, manis/pedis in the morning.
I helped to host a bridal luncheon on Sat. afternoon. My grandmother hosts a bridal luncheon for each of her granddaughters, but she has been under the weather lately, and not really able to drive - so I took over and had a great time helping arrange. She had booked a small conference room in the hotel we stayed at and contacted a caterer for "tea" like food - sandwiches, fruit, petit fours etc. It was really nice for everyone to be able to walk downstairs for the lunch instead of trying to find another location. We had about 35 women and it was just a sweet re-group of everyone. The mothers and grandmothers made some emotional toasts along with a lot of laughs. Since my organizing was last minute, I just went to my local grocery store Friday morning and picked up fresh pink Gerbera daisies and some other fresh white and yellow flowers (sorry, NOT a flower person - have no idea what they were),and cut them short. I have a few short glass square vases and just simply wrapped some grosgrain ribbon around them and set them out. Now, Target apparently has a new wedding section (not just stationary) !!! Yes, I think I literally did a squeal for joy in the aisle. Of course, I got there as they were setting it up so I only got to see a few things but oh, they were good. It seems like there will be a lot of favors (small tin buckets, votive holders) and things like fake rose petals. Oh so cute, I picked up some pink confetti that they had to sprinkle on the tables too. They also, by chance, had some great napkins with pink Gerber daisies on them! And I picked up wooden block letters of their initials and used some more ribbon to tie around them to the door of the luncheon room. All in all, Target helped me out getting some last minute decor done & I'm really looking foward to seeing all that they bring out for their wedding stuff.
Then, the ceremony was absolutely beautiful. She had it outdoors, in the park, with people seated in an ampitheater type setting and the bride and groom on a dock on a small pond/lake, she had one guitar player for music and she wore a vintage looking (Watters) lace strapless gown. Everything was gorgeous! We, the bridesmaids, wore the Emma silk faille dress in a chartruese/lime green. She had a fantastic arrangement of bright orange, pink and green flowers, which really popped with the dresses. Just a beautiful spring wedding! Then, the wedding party walked through the park to the reception at the Magnolia Hall where we had some great food, cocktails & fun music. Everyone, even my sweet little 84 year old grandfather got up and boogied for awhile. My fiance is somewhat of an amateur photographer ( I happen to think he's wonderful, but I am biased) so she hired him to take pictures - he was really nervous but they came out wonderful!! I will post some when he gets them all loaded up. But,even though he was busy most of the time, we just got very excited about our own wedding. She gave us a good lesson in "don't sweat the small stuff" - she had all of the right elements and everyone had a great time. It made me really look at how the weddings are all about the love of two people and not about the monogrammed napkins, that perhaps, no one will remember as much as how great the bride and groom are - cheesy but oh, so true. Well, enough of my gooey cheesiness today.
On a more fun note, you may ask, how does one have time to shop during all of that?? I laugh. Because where there is a will, there is a way. I shopped for a small amount of time in between the luncheon and pictures and got a great little striped tee at Banana for the summer. Then, I also made sure I ordered a few J.Crew sale items before they disappeared. And, we stopped at outlets on the way home. No wonder I'm exhausted! I was excited by the J.Crew outlet because I saw so many great things but I did make a sale purchase online already, so I had to stop myself. However, I think I'm going to make a big summer purchasing trip there because they had so many great shorts, capris, dresses and tees. I did pick up a great little sundress at the Banana outlet for 50.00 - blue with green, yellow and white flowers (lame description, I understand, but no pics online).
Now, I'm back to the grind and with the weather and all of the wedding talk, I'm really ready for the summer. I'll post some pics and hopefully do that wedding post later this week, because now we are are back into full on wedding planning mode with a little more than 4 months left! As all my family said their goodbyes, it was to the tune of see you in August at your wedding. Oh geez, we better get on the ball.