An Alabama wedding

These past few weeks have been busy busy busy! As the weather gets warmer in Tennessee, our weekends seem to have more packed into them, which is ok by me.

Last weekend, Patrick, Haley, Todd and I piled in the van (a.k.a. the Swagger Wagon) and took a road trip to Alabama to see our friends Matt and Rachel get married. I've known Matt for a little over 2 years. He was in the same group of friends that Patrick was in when we lived in Virginia, and I have a lot of great memories of all of us having bbq's and movie nights at Patrick's bachelor pad not that long ago. After graduating, he moved back to Alabama to be closer to family, and ended up meeting his fiancee (now wife) Rachel. Happily, a few months ago Matt accepted a job where Pat and I both work, and he now lives in Tennessee - and will, of course, be bringing Rachel with him after they honeymoon in Aspen.

I was really excited about this wedding because it would be the first one Patrick and I attended since our own wedding 2 years ago. There's just something magical about seeing 2 people so in love, nervously standing before each other, giving their hearts to one another completely. Love is a beautiful thing. It made me think of the long wait that I went through to get to my wedding day, only to have it fly by in an instant when I myself was standing before my husband, sliding a ring onto his finger.


The wedding was gorgeous. Rachel and Matt had chosen black, yellow, and white as their colors, and the whole wedding had a very fresh, "springy" feel to it. The flower girls were adorable in their little white dresses and daisies in their hair, and of course Rachel was radient. We were also glad to have a few of our friends at the wedding as well, especially since many of them hadn't seen Haley since she was a tiny baby. We all shared a row at the back of the church (in case I had to escape with a whiny toddler.)

Since we didn't want to leave Haley alone while we stayed overnight in Alabama, she came too and was a perfect angel throughout the whole wedding - up until they were reciting their vows and she started saying "oooooohhh," which seemed hilariously appropriate. She kept herself entertained with an assortment of board books, toys, and an iPhone - which she loves playing Bejeweled on. She's going to be the reigning champ by age 3. She sat through the whole wedding and then it was onto the reception. Without a solid nap in between, Pat and I wondered how she'd do since the reception would undoubtedly go until late evening.

The reception was held at an art museum in Mobile. They had gone all out with personalized decorations like monogrammed aprons for some of the people serving food, and personalized coffee sleeves and goody bags for the favors - a cookie table where guests could choose from an assortment of homemade cookies. My favorite thing was the cake which, of course, carried out their yellow/white theme perfectly. And yes, it was as good as it looked.

After making it through several rounds at the buffet, toddling around the entire art museum, and the cake cutting, Haley promptly collapsed on Pat's shoulder in exhaustion at 9 pm. We were just glad that we made it through the whole night without any major freak outs from a little girl with no afternoon nap. We missed the dancing, but hey, I'm pretty sure the people there weren't ready for our sweet dance moves anyway. Oh well, maybe at the next wedding...