Since many of our friends and family plus locals check out this website and REALLY want to know how everything turned out, the remaider of this week will be dedicated to WEDDING WEEK. Kind of like Shark Week on the Discovery channel!
The theme of the wedding was “Blueberries, Blue Gingham and Bluegrass”. Jes also wanted rustic Florida so our back yard was the perfect location. The shed was the backdrop on one side and our beautiful view of the Chassahowitzka Nature Preserse was on the other. So Incredible!
There are numerous people that I want to thank and I hope I don’t forget any of them. But unfortunately I will. So those I miss–Thank you, thank you, thank you.
First, the dress. It was gorgeous and perfect. Jessica wanted a vintage dress for her rustic wedding and after many fruitless searches she asked our family friend, Yvonne Chorvat, if she could try the dress on that Yvonne wore in the 60s. Almost a perfect fit, Jes had the dress altered and supplemented it with a second dress for the reception.
Yvonne also officiated at the ceremony. So nice to have such a wonderful friend!
My niece Michelle Beal, her husband Jon, and son William were on the “wedding committee”. Great ideas and enormous amounts of their hard labor helped to make the wedding a success. Michelle created the chandelier and Jon wired it and we used it to light our dance floor. You may remember it from previous posts.
Michelle also made the blueberry jam that was the wedding favor. She not only made the jam, she went to a blueberry farm and picked the blueberries! How real is that? You can check out the jam story at her new website Badzoot.com.
Next, I want to thank all of Jes and Andrew’s friends and Andrew’s family that showed up early and helped set up the tables and decorate and pull everything together. In the friend category I have to give a shout out to Lindsay. I don’t know how we could have pulled this off without her.
My amazingly-talented sister Ellen Snyder provided the beautiful cake–she creates wedding cakes professionally and has generously provided the cake for all of the weddings in the family. She also provided the photo “booth” which I will post about tomorrow!
My camera stayed tucked away in the house for the wedding but one of the guests, Andrew Feldmen, let me grab some of his pics from his Picasa Album. Thank you Andrew Feldmen!
Our family friend Donna Lowe ran the video cam which I will eventually edit. (I still haven’t edited Alan and Lauri’s from six months ago! Slacker!)
Eli from JLH Tree Company provided the “stump” for the wedding cake. Yeah, I’ll explain that as soon as someone sends me some pics!
Our neighbors and friends, Sue, Paul and Jeremy who bartended. And may have consumed a few beverages.
Our neighbor Bill and his son-in-law Michael that generously offered the yard for our guests to use for parking!
And all of our other neighbors that did not call the police about the noise.
Then we had the clean up/party crew that showed up Sunday and proceeded to breakdown the tables and chairs and finish off the adult beverages and massive quantities of food left behind by Papa Joe and the fish that Rob and crew caught on their fishing adventure.
Our catering was provided by Papa Joe’s in Brooksville. The food and service were excellent! Thank you Papa Joe and Giavonni.
Our photographer, Erin Whitman from Papered Heart Photography, was wonderful and so helpful. I am so looking forward to seeing her photos.
We had a bluegrass band! I didn’t think that was going to happen, but NINE days before the wedding, Andrew let me know that he had hired the Cotton Eyed Does. They were excellent. And incredibly friendly. And now I am going to try really hard to learn that banjo and join the band! Or at least jam with them.
Our DJ was Your Next DJ, Erick Mejia. He kept the party going!
Amanda Hamilton and Vicey from New Concepts International Hair Salon in Crystal River did our hair and makeup. So we were very beautiful.
And MacRae’s of Homosassa where we had the “Rehearsal Dinner”. More pics of that to follow this week!
Ohhhhh, there are so many more. Forgive me if I missed you.
More to come this week!
‘Murphy’ and The Weather Gods conspired to ruin the events at nearly every turn – to no avail!!! They teased us with weeks of fabulous weather and then decided to test us. First a little wind – not enough. How ’bout some wind AND rain, ‘you people are still happy’? OK, wind, then rain and a few hours of heat and humidity… oh, no? Fine – you get a trifecta of trouble with wind, harder rain and a blast of cold ! Nothing they threw at us could deter our happiness – what a great time !!