I'm back baby!

Back to life, back to reality, and ready to blog about it.

I might not have started this soon, but my landlord apparently thinks we're still not back and started drilling on the house at 7 a.m. Brilliant.

I can't believe it's all over. I hate wedding cliches like the plague, but it really did go by so fast. I'm going to try and recap it all in as much detail as I can, which might take me some time. I don't want to feel that this daunting task of recapping the last 10 days of my life to be like homework, and I don't fool myself into thinking there's anyone out there who really wants every blow-by-blow. (Most people are probably happy with a handful of pictures, a "It was great!" and let's talk about something else.)

But for my sake, when my memory fades, I'd like to have as vivid a description as I can of the happiest few days of my life when I'm old, gray, and they implant my blog into the computer in my head.

With that. We'll start at the rehearsal.

We all met down at the beach at 1 p.m. on a beautiful day to run through our rehearsal as quickly as possible -- which is nearly impossible. Silly me had scheduled our nail appointments for 2 p.m. and in Bristol -- half an hour away. So although the rehearsal was something I considered very important, I stood there with the "Go faster, go faster, go faster" face on and upped my anxiety level about 13 points (Of course, in the end, it was totally fine. I mean, damn, we're just walking right?)

Still had time for some pics though! Notice my awesome ribbon bouquet courtesy of my fabulous MOH Katie.

Dad walking me down the aisle.

Gotta practice the smooch!

Cousins!

We jetted off to get our nails done and I got my first ever pedicure. I'll tell you right now, I'm strongly considering making that part of my beauty regimen :) My feet looked/felt awesome! Moving on...

Most people probably wouldn't mention their rehearsal dinner, but since mine was probably, oh the best night of my life, I figure it's worth a mention.

We decided to eschew the normal sit-down rehearsal dinner for a cocktail style welcome party. We found a place in downtown Newport called Pop! Kitchen and Cocktails and met with the owner who was more than willing to work within our budget.

It was the best decision we made!

I managed to show up on time and find a great parking spot, two strokes of lucky considering Friday traffic and all. We had the bar all to ourselves for three hours which was, again, amazing and the food started rolling out shortly after we got there. Initially I was worried about the food, both the quality and the quantity, but damn, what was I worrying about (You'll hear that alot in this space). The food was, in my opinion, really, really good and plentiful. I was absolutely stuffed by the end of the night.

What was so great about the rehearsal dinner was that it brought together people from all over my life. And it made me realize, the people in my life could be the best set of people in the world. Am I exaggerating? Maybe. But everyone was so friendly. There were no wallflowers. No one hid in a corner. Our friends from San Diego were talking to my family and our straight shooting friends were talking to our wild ones and everyone got together amazingly well! You know those kind of nights. Where everyone around you seems to be having a great time, there's no awkward silence, everyone's eating and drinking and you just feel... full of happiness.









The only hiccup, and it wasn't even really one, was that my surprise groom's cake MELTED on the way to the rehearsal dinner space and sort of started to tilt to one side. Oh well. I wasn't upset about it at all, but my dear cousin Tracie, who picked it up for me, was pretty upset. I told her no sweat! People still thought it looked great and it tasted awesome. I think Jeff liked it.



At the end of the night, totally unexpectedly, the owner of Pop! brought out champagne for the whole wedding party and we had an impromptu toast which was a nice moment. Since I was driving and had two glasses of wine already, I passed my glass to my champagne loving fiance.


Jeff had just as much -- or more -- than me. He was beboppin' and scattin' around that room having the time of his life. Too much fun in fact, because at the end of the night I could hardly hear him, he had lost his voice. The night before our wedding.

To be continued!