Wedding Planning

Last weekend my school corporation gave us Friday off for Fall Break. Then they decided that elementary school was no longer going to have half days of school at all, so they had to build in a full day for parent-teacher conferences. If we finished our conferences before the conference date, then we could take the day off! Yay! So I got a four day weekend. My mom seized the opportunity and flew the two of us to Anna Maria Island to meet with all of the vendors before the wedding.
We left Thursday (October 29th) morning and arrive in FL by noon. We rented a car and headed to the outlet mall in Ellington. I highly recommend this outlet mall. I got a new fuchsia jacket at J. Crew, originally $300, for under $60.
We had dinner and tried to find a place to stay on the beach. The problem was that is was already dark outside, this is not really tourist season, and the hotels on the beach closed at sundown. We finally found a place, but they only had room for one night. That ending up being a blessing. The room was large and clean, but the bed was hard as a rock, the room was so bright my mom couldn't sleep, and the key to our room didn't work.
The next morning we got up and went to the Tortuga Inn to see if they had any available room. That is where I have booked to stay for the wedding and honeymoon. Luckily, they had a room and it was glorious! The link actually shows the exact room we stayed in. The shower was so huge it took half of the bathroom.
















In this picture you can kinda see how the shower takes up the entire other half of the bathroom. It was very strange, but nice not having a nasty hotel shower curtain touch your skin. Don't mind my mom in the photo, she was just gettin' ready :o)

The lovely people at The Tortuga Inn then gave us the keys so we could see the room that my mom has booked for December and the room I have booked in December. I cannot believe how beautiful the rooms are. It is amazing. We are both staying in Tortuga Gardens (They own the strip of island between the gulf coast and bay area, so they spit the area into different sections depending on room size). I have a 1 bedroom/1 bath luxury apartment. My mom has a 2 bedroom/2 bath luxury apartment. They are amazing. The apartments are actually bigger than my townhouse.

Friday morning we woke up and headed to breakfast. This was our view from our table:

Then as we were sitting there, some dolphins swam by. Although, in these pictures they look more like sharks:

We layed on the beach until about 2:30 when we had to go in and get ready to meet people. The beach was so nice, the hotel provides beach towels, chairs, and umbrellas! It was amazing. Did I mention that already?

First, we met the florist. She put together my wedding bouquet. Here she is with the flowers laied out before she got to work:

Then she slowly put this together:

Don't look at me, I just got out of the shower and my hair is still wet. Also, the flowers haven't been trimmed they won't be that long at the wedding. You also have to imagine that the calla lilies are white, not pink. Pink was all she had at the time.

 The flowers are so pretty. She even gave us two strands of orchids to take with us. I cannot believe the color of the blue orchids. They grow that way naturally. I think God must have been having a good day when He made those. They are just beautiful.

Right after the florist, we met with the photographer and the DJ. I gave the DJ all of my song choices and we set up times with the photographer.
Then it was time to try and find the bakery I wanted to have make Sparky's groom's cake. I wanted to get him a red velvet cake in the shape of a 70-something Chevy Chevelle, but we couldn't find the bakery before they closed and Sparky didn't have much of a reaction when I told him my wonderful idea, so the idea got scrapped. I only go out of my way for things that elicit a good reaction.
However, when we were at the outlet mall the previous day we went to the Kate Spade outlet store. There was a lady inside who was talking about all the things she needed to be doing to get ready for her son's wedding. Which is going to be this weekend, at the same location, with the same vendors, with a starfish theme, and her future daughter-in-law's name is Sarah. Wow. Anyway, we started talking to her and she told us how she found some chocolate molds in the shape of starfish and how she was had a place called Rick's Bakery make marbleized chocolates for them as wedding favors. She gave us the bakery's information and told us she left the chocolate mold at the chocolate shop. We stopped by and got a pretty good deal. They even had some of the chocolates they made for our new Kate Spade friend:

I am going to do one dark chocolate and one milk chocolate because I don't like white chocolate or marbleized stuff. While I was there I couldn't help looking around and getting some other fun stuff:

like aspirin for the teachers at school

a motorcycle for Sparky since he can't ride his

and a spark plug for Sparky, because who could resist that? I can honestly say I have never seen a spark plug chocolate before this experience.

On Saturday we got to lay out for just a little while on the beach before we had to go meet the officiant. The meeting with him literally took 12 minutes. Wow. I am glad I didn't make a special trip just for that! Then we were off to dinner at Mr. Bones and to the hotel by the airport. This hotel (Marriott) had the best bed yet, and the room was pitch black. We slept like babies until 5:00am when we had to get up for our flight home.

Sunday morning we got up early, cleverly stuffed our new prizes (from the outlet mall) into our suitcases, and headed home.

I got home and it was back to reality. Laundry, a filthy house to clean, homework to do for my master's degree, lesson plans to write for my yearly observation by the principal at school, and planning for the following week.