I'm keeping my promise to you to post on Nate and Virginia's wedding. :) (Applause, please!)
The week of the wedding dawned supremely busy. Everything that could go on was going on. We decided spur of the moment to leave Tuesday for Tennessee instead of Wednesday. After finishing last minute things, we left around 1 Tuesday afternoon. We stopped in St Louis over night, then drove the rest of the way on Wednesday.
We were rather proud of ourselves. We packed seven people's belongings in the back of the van with room to spare! :)
Sam and I always have to sit in the back since we're the shortest. It's actually not too bad. :)
I took a picture of this river (and others), telling myself that I'd better write it's name down, but of course I just knew I'd remember it. I don't even need to tell you what happened...
We were impressed with the size of the barges!
We stopped at a Bob Evan's restaurant for supper. The food was amazing! This is their chicken fried steak dinner. I only ate like a quarter of it!
Abi ordered a brownie Sunday.
KK and I each got a piece of french silk pie. Oh, heaven. It was out of this world good! I didn't have any problem eating all of it. ;P
We ran into some bad weather after supper. It got pretty nasty there for awhile!
Stuck in traffic...
Singing along with Legacy Five. :)
St Louis Arch
Boredom reigned during the next day of travel... Note: Keep bags away from children. They may place the bag over their head and suffocate.
As we were driving up to Manchester, we noticed a very familiar looking car behind us. It turned out to be Nate and Gin on their way to Wednesday evening services at their church. They followed us into our hotel parking lot where we were able to see them for a bit before they had to leave. That was a special treat!
Kelsey texted us this picture of li'l miss Katelyn. Apparently, she'd found a marker in her car seat and proceeded to color all over herself. At least one of the colors for the wedding was blue! :P
Thursday evening we all gathered at the Rudolph's house to take family pictures.
Selfie time!
My brothers are so handsome! :)
(Sorry, I wanted to wait to do this post till we'd gotten the professional photographs, but they still aren't ready yet.)
It was interesting to meet the entire Rudolph family. Also a bit scary to meet in laws for the first time only two days before the wedding!
Lindy had a toy camera that she was "taking pictures" with.
The boy's had a foursquare game going down in Philip Rudolph's shop.
If there's a ball present that Doughy can play with, he is instantly in heaven :)
Nate lives in Coffee county. :) We were also staying in that county. :) (Yes, I blurred the plate info out intentionally.) :)
Little mister enjoying a bagel at breakfast the next morning.
LOL :D
Friday was reception set up, rehearsal dinner food prep, and the rehearsal. We made the food for the rehearsal dinner and Ryan and Kels made cake for dessert.
Doughy got to lick the frosting spatula. :)
Reception hall set up
The girl on the ladder was their reception coordinator.
Instead of having a bridal table, they set up two family tables and a bride and groom table.
Memorabilia shelf
Back in the kitchen, we were prepping rehearsal dinner food like mad! :)
They had rented a school gym and cafeteria for the reception. The kitchen was really yucky dirty and very poorly outfitted with kitchen supplies. We weren't terribly impressed.
Just in case you were getting bored, here's a little something to wake you up. :)
Dad made some incredible BBQ pulled pork. Wow!
Our family's wedding clothes
Rehearsal dinner is served! We had so much food left over!
I was so incredibly tired, as I'm sure you can see in the picture. But don't look at me, look at that sweet li'l thing I'm holding. She's so cute!
Here we are at the rehearsal. Gram got better pictures, but I never did get them from her. You'll just have to be contented with these few then. :)
The first time I walked up the aisle with Aaron, I didn't know how to hold a guy's arm. Somebody had to show me how. ;P Lol :)
Abi took a short video of the rehearsal.
There was a storm brewing when we got done with the rehearsal.
Sorry, I don't have any pictures of the wedding. Gram does, but I didn't get them from her. Maybe sometime I'll get them and post 'em on here. :)
The reception dinner
Aaron, Whitney, and another guy played background piano music during the reception.
The happy couple :)
This isn't a very good picture, but, hey, that's what selfies are all about, right?
This lady from their church did the cakes. Oh, man! They were so yummy!!!
I let Katelyn pick her own piece of cake. :) Her cheeseball grin tells you how excited she was to eat it! :)
Don't we all wish we could do this sometimes?
Kettle with my bridesmaid bouquet. Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that I was one of the bridesmaids. :)
These were all the helpers and servers.
Signing the marriage license
Julian Hege and his friend hung out by the cake table. I can't imagine why...
We had kinda a mini Grice/Smith reunion up there on the stairs. It was fun. :)
Leaving for their honeymoon!
'Nother selfie :)
Back at the hotel, we had rented the conference room to gather in. We reheated the rehearsal dinner food for supper. Ronnie and Ben ran to Walmart to get plates, plastic ware, pop, etc. We were a little lacking in some areas. :P
I love this picture! Such a pretty little thing.
Somebody had gotten ice out of the hotel's ice machine. Ben and Ronnie took turns slipping pieces down each other's shirts. Ben even put some down my dress. :)
It was so fun talking with Ronnie again! We basically grew up with him and his family.
Sam, Brie and Grace had fun in the swimming pool. :)
Teasing Ben :D
Christina and Susanna put a total of eight safety pins in my belt to keep it in place!
We were so exhausted that evening! We had a little surprise, though. Willard and Dawn showed up to join our party, then Steve and Shana showed up later. It was quite the crowd. Willard and Steve are an interesting combination. :)
We left the hotel Sunday morning around 7 or so. It took about 13 long hours to get home...
This huge group of bikers passed us at one point. Grace counted 22 of them!
An amusement park. We were very amused. :) JK :)
We stopped at Arby's for supper. Several of us got their bacon sandwich. It has three pieces of pepper bacon and three pieces of brown sugar bacon. Wow. It was scrumptious!
We were so glad to get home that evening!
I hope I didn't miss anything. It seems like the wedding was so long ago. So much has happened since then, I'm sure I didn't cover everything that happened.
Enjoyed reading about everything! We have seen the T-Rex thing many times on our way to ne! My brothers love it!
ReplyDeleteI'm so happy for both of them! That's so exciting!