My Big Sister's Wedding Festivities, part 2

As I promised, here is the second part of Sara and Adam's wedding.  This one is focused on the reception.  Sara did an excellent job decorating for the wedding.  She had so many DIY items that added to the beauty of the reception (and the ceremony).  Once I have her professional photos, I will have to share the pictures of what she made since I didn't have a chance to take any pictures of the items myself.

Adam and Sara as they were first introduced as Husband and Wife.

During their first dance.

The Head Table, and of course Colleen is making a goofy face again.

Here I am as I am giving my speech.  Now the procrastinator in me kicked in to high gear for my speech.  I was finalizing it up to about an hour before we had to be ready for pictures.  Luckily the only hiccup in the speech was in my use of the microphone as it cut out a few times.  

Our beautiful daughter with her Pop Pop and Mom Mom during the reception

Now this was completely unprovoked...Aydan and Forrest were both in the wedding and they ended up chasing each other all around the reception hall.  Here is Forrest leading Aydan off the dance floor.  I love this look he is giving.  Notice his cape is still on-he wore it the entire night and had a great time.

The Father-daughter dance to "Brown Eyed Girl."  I love this picture!

Aydan and Forrest danced along with Sara and Dad.  

They even hugged and took a bow at the end of the song!

Adam dancing with his mom Lucy.

After the normal wedding events, it was time to party!  The groomsmen and Adam all had super-hero shirts on underneath their dress-shirts so they got a little more comfortable as the night went on.  My Mom's side of the family having a good time.

Jacque's husband Matt and Pat 

Cousins on my Dad's side dancing the night away.

Supposedly Adam doesn't dance much, but he sure did have a good time on the dance floor!

Sara and Adam left under a shower of sparklers.  I am so happy for my sister and new brother-in-law!

My Big Sister's Wedding Festivities, part 1

Sara's wedding was a little over 3 weeks ago and it was a great weekend.  I have a lot of pictures to share so I am splitting this up into two posts.

Our cousin Jere came home from his deployment only about 2 weeks before the wedding, so luckily he was able to make it out for the special occasion.  Here he is hanging out with Kalea as we were loading up the cars to drive down to Temecula.

We had the rehearsal the day before the wedding and I just love this picture.  Colleen is on the left making one of her usual faces and Heather is standing in for Jacque on the right with a wonderful look on her face.

Kristin, Katie, and I 

Adam made quite a few faces during the rehearsal, he was having a great time!

John making one of his many faces, Pat with Kalea and Danny during the rehearsal.

Adam's mom Lucy, Jere's fiance Kate, Aunt Carol, and Gma hanging out while we practice the wedding.

The Rehearsal Lunch crowd.

Sara with my parents

I love her guest book.  She ordered it on Etsy and it is so cute!  

Our cousin Katie's son Forrest was the ring bearer and my mom made him a super-hero cape...he loved it!

Kalea and Sara taking a picture break during the wedding day prep.

Unlike at my brother's wedding, Kalea managed to take a pretty good nap before the festivities began.

Jere escorted Gma down the aisle in his dress blues.  Now that I am going through these pictures, I see that our family sure does like to make funny faces when taking pictures!

Colleen during the ceremony on the right, and Jacque with her daughter Aydan walking down the aisle.

Kalea and I walking down the aisle.

Our Dad walking his first born down the aisle

Adam waiting for his bride-to-be.  Notice the flower ball hanging behind him, my sister made those and they turned out so pretty.  There were supposed to be 9 of them hanging from the gazebo, but the site didn't have a ladder tall enough so they had to put some of them on the steps.  It still looked pretty though.

Colleen, Jacque, Kristin, Katie, and me all lined up during the ceremony.

Forrest relaxing on the steps eating his popcorn during the ceremony.

They are almost married!

Getting ready to take formal group pictures after the ceremony...it was pretty cold that night!

Thanks to my Uncle David for taking the pictures during the ceremony, and a lot of the reception ones still to come.  The next post will be from the reception...  there are some really cute ones of Aydan and Forrest on the dance floor!

Sara's Bridal Shower

My sister's bridal shower was a couple of weeks ago, the day after her Bachelorette, which I recently wrote about.  The inspiration for her shower were hearts, wine, and things Sara loves.  

We went with the colors of purple and green to represent wine since she is getting married at a winery and used wine bottles as part of our floral decorations.  Sara and her fiance, Adam, have always shared random pictures of hearts found in random locations.  It became their "thing" pretty early on in their relationship.  

For things she loves, my mom and I focused on her favorite foods to help focus our plan for food.  We served bite-size, appetizer portions of all different kinds of food.  Our menu included:

Spinach-Artichoke dip in puff pastry shells

Fruit with a mascarpone cinnamon dip

Mini tacos in puff pastry

Lasagna bites (her favorite food)

7 layer dip

Caesar Salad in pancetta cups

Drinks:

Sangria

Blueberry acai iced tea

Strawberry lemonade 

For dessert we had:

White-chocolate Raspberry cheesecake (we bought a cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory-we had to go easy some where)

Home-made caramel with apples

White Chocolate macadamia nut cookies

With so much stuff to plan in a short amount of time, I was lucky enough to have some very wonderful bridesmaids who helped out with some planning.  Our cousin Jacque made adorable invitations for me and took care of having them printed.  Our cousin Katie helped with planning some games for the shower, luckily her mom Teri had some pretty good ideas (and took care of setting them up and the prizes!)   It was amazing to not have to worry about what we were going to do, especially since the ideas I was coming up with were going to take a lot of time to make it work.

After everyone enjoyed the food, Teri helped get the games going.  I love her "teacher" bell she used.  The first game was a candy themed game where names of various candies were matched to wedding themed events/people/things.  For example, "the wedding night" was matched with a "Skor" candy bar.  

Every one took the game very seriously.  There were some very fun/amusing matches in this game.  

The second game was a take on a shower game where you have to write down everything you remember seeing.  The twist for this game, however, was in the instructions given by Teri to take notice of every thing you see, without specifically mentioning items on the tray.  Once Sara left with her tray of kitchen goodies, Teri then told everyone to write down everything they noticed about what Sara was wearing.  Once that was done, then we switched and had them write down what was on the tray.  

Here is our cousin Katie and her adorable son Talin.

Kalea hanging out on Jacque's lap with Jacque's daughter Aydan.

My mom made Sara a cake platter that will actually be used for the wedding cake.  So pretty!

Our family tradition of giving the bride-to-bo a quilt turned out amazing!  9 women on my mom's side of the family each cross-stitched a square and my Grandma put together the entire quilt.  Green and Blue are colors Sara and Adam both love, and are part of their wedding colors.  Notice the two hearts intertwined.  The cross-stitch squared were each a different kind of heart design as well.

The dessert table and the heart garland.  I forgot to take a picture of the food tables before the party started, so the dessert table is pretty empty at this point.

Here is the banner I made "From Miss to Mrs"

Sara's work friends.  I took a couple pics since I caught them eating their desserts in the first one.

Our wonderfully crazy cousin Colleen, she loved the caramel we made (it was sooo good!)

My dad's cousins with Kalea.  Teri is on the far right, the wonderful game planner!

Katie with Talin again and her sister Megan holding Kalea.

My mom enjoying some Kalea time as the shower was wrapping up.

Sara with both moms.  I am pretty cheesy and made my mom stand on the "miss" side and Adam's mom stand on the "mrs" side.

Overall, the shower was a great success and Sara was really happy with it all.  My mom and I did our best to make it a surprise for her, especially since she loves to be involved with planning things.  I tried my best to come up with things that she had not seen, and I think we managed to surprise her with a few things (thanks pinterest for lots of great recipes!).  It really was a fun shower and I am so glad we were able to make it special for her, because she really deserves the best.  

We are just under 3 weeks away from the wedding (wow!) and I need to get going on my Matron of Honor speech.  Wish me luck!