5 Weddings

Several months ago I was sort of commenting to God about how I had only one wedding last year and I wouldn't mind if I could get a few more than that this year... Well, God heard and answered. So far, I've had a total of 8 weddings scheduled for this calendar year, including 1 that was not from the church but just a friend who hired me to direct the wedding of her sister at her father's house. Five of those weddings were all in a row. I've never had two in the same month I don't think, much less 5 in a row! I thought it would be fun to document those.....

Wedding #1: May 21

This wedding was a first for me in many ways - my first job not related to the church. My first outdoor wedding. The location was just beautiful:

This is the backyard of the father of the bride. There were several meaningful things. The couple got married under the arch that the bride's parents were married under. On the left in the picture below is a candle that was lit in memory of the mother of the bride, lit by the the father and sister before the ceremony started. On the right, a sand ceremony that the bride, groom and the bride's children participated in.

The Groom then presented the bride's two girls with rings as he joined their family. It was very sweet and the girls were very surprised.

Wedding #2: May 28 (Photos for this wedding provided by Jeff Tesney Photography)

This wedding was unique in that the couple told me from the beginning that they wanted to involve the wedding guests through corporate worship. As they lit the unity candle, our Worship Pastor led us in the song "Take My Life and Let It Be". It was truly a worshipful moment and I could sense the Holy Spirit's presence - so much so that I forgot to text the caterer when the wedding was over!


Other Unique Elements: The unity candle was a floating candle, which I had never seen before. It's was beautiful! Unfortunately it only came with 6" tapers and by the time we got to that part of the ceremony, the candles had burned down so far that they only had little nubs left to light the unity candle with. But they handled it well. Live and learn.

During the reception, one of the bridesmaids performed an interpretive dance.

Wedding #3: June 4

This bride is a member of our church's orchestra so she had asked a trio of trumpet players to perform at the wedding for the processional and recessional. That was really fabulous! Plus it was fun because I knew one of the bridesmaids and all the trumpet players. :-)

This wedding, like the previous, had their reception at the church. That's a little unusual these days. Our church has an in-house caterer that does all the weddings and events and it's been good working with Chef Jim. At this wedding we FINALLY figured out the best way to set up the fellowship hall for receptions. Yea!

Wedding #4: June 11

This was a fun wedding because the groom was the son of our Worship Pastor and while I didn't meet the couple until we started working together, I knew his parents and several members of the wedding party. But what made this wedding truly memorable to me was the bride. She has an amazing bubbly personality and was so emotional on her wedding day. She was in tears as she walked down the aisle. And when the groom began to recite his vows, she was so excited she couldn't contain herself and was bouncing up and down and laughing! Talk about joy!

Unique Elements: The father of the groom performed the ceremony - that was very emotional and touching. The couple performed a foot washing during the wedding. And they used a custom made aisle runner, shown below.


Wedding #5: June 18
I have to admit by the time this wedding rolled around I was getting rather tired and was very thankful that this wedding was NOT having their reception at the church. :-) The families were SO sweet and the bride was just stunning.

Unique elements: The flower girl's dress had a train. The guest book was a book with pictures from the brides photo session:

Movie Time!

Today was a momentous occasion - I day I have anticipated for about 5 years.... we took Maggie to her first movie in a theater! You may know how easily frightened she gets by things in even relatively calm movies (she's yet to make it through any Disney princess film - she did see "Tangled" at her cousin's house but watched about half of it from the kitchen with her hands over her ears). So Ben and I were excited when we saw that Winnie the Pooh was hitting theaters this weekend! We checked the review at PluggedIn.com and was relieved that they gave it a very whole-hearted endorsement.


Maggie had a great time, although she did not like the majority of the previews (too scary!) and we all agreed that there were far too many. But other than that, she enjoyed it. She got scared a couple of times (**spoiler warning** ). We had to tell her that there was, in fact, no monster called "backson" in the movie. She relaxed a bit after that. It's a great family film, runs shorter than your average movie - great for this age! And has many cute, funny scenes! Two thumbs up!

Our Summer Vacation

Last week we had one of our annual Tour D' Parents. We usually go up to my folks place in Western NC sometime around early July (escape the heat!) and hit Opelika coming and going. This time we dropped Maggie off with Ben's folks early for about 5 extra days of spoilage - I mean quality time with Grandmom, Granddad and Aunt Peg. :-) They all had a blast!

Friday, Ben and I drove up with Abby and helped to celebrate Grandmom's birthday. Maggie "decorated the cake all by myself" as she proudly pointed out multiple times. :-)


We ended up heading on up to my parents a day earlier than we had planned to take advantage of an opportunity to cross paths with my sister Jenny and her husband Don at my parents. We were looking forward to this, not only because we hadn't seen them since their wedding last year, but also because they had not met Abby. It was great to see them but unfortunately Abby ended up coming down with a fever Sunday so my time was mostly spent nursing her. Thankfully she perked up quickly and was back to normal the next day.

Here's a shot with my folks:


Ben got a special treat on Sunday - a chance to meet one of his heroes, Oliver North! Turns out he was speaking at a church not too far from where my folks live so he got to enjoy that. Later that day, my dad took Don and Ben on a drive up the Blue Ridge Parkway - always a treat!


One of the highlights for me on this trip was taking Maggie on a canoe trip on Lake Junaluska with my dad.

Back when I was growing up in Wisconsin, this was something our family did frequently so I was excited to introduce her to it. She did GREAT! I gave her a disposable camera and let her be the trip photographer. I'll post those later.

Of course what trip to NC would be complete without a family hiking trip? Maggie insisted on going back to Craggy Gardens.


This makes the third time in a row. We agreed only with the understanding that next time we were going someplace else! But this is a great hike - except for the fact that I forgot the bug spray! Mommy ended up with nine bug bites on the back of one knee. Ouch.

This is one of their favorite spots on the trail:



We got the privilege of watching Fireworks in both locations - in Opelika on the first and in NC on the 4th! Both shows were a big hit! Maggie liked the NC one better though, I think because it was a smaller setting. They do their fireworks over Lake Junaluska and my parents have friends with a house near the lake. So we got to hang out in their front yard, enjoying the lovely sunset -
and catching fireflies before the fireworks started. It was great!

Maggie started a hummingbird tally in Opelika and kept track of each sighting. She got to around 30 or 40 and stopped counting. :-) She loved watching them though and we had several in NC too:
On the way back down to AL, Ben got to meet another hero. Gene Chizik was doing a book signing at the LifeWay in Kennesaw, GA and the manager there is a friend of Ben's and fellow Aburn Alum so he asked Ben to "come help".


I'm not sure how much "help" he really needed - everything went very smoothly - but Ben was excited to get a chance to get a picture with the coach that made his dreams come true! ;-) Not to mention, the autographed book.

Abby was working on her skills this trip. New skills like crawling up stairs, and practicing standing up by letting go after she has pulled up:

She'll be walking before we know it!

We had a LOT of fun with our family on this trip and it was hard to come back to Mobile - it's so HOT! Ben's already counting down the days till the next trip up North!

Happy Independence Day!

Ok, so I'm a few days late. We just got back from our annual Tour D' Parents (more on that to come). I had a lot of fun taking fireworks pics, so here is a sample. A slideshow will be up on the blog (top right corner) soon.