Wedding Planning Weekend

I flew home for a fast and furious weekend full of wedding planning.  My mom and sister were such troopers!  I met with florists, the hair salon, ordered the tuxes, reviewed the ceremony outline with Pastor Joe, decided how to decorate the church, visited with my dear friend Mandy, set up table centerpieces, and worked on many other smaller wedding details.  Here's a sneak preview:

We also practiced the reception layout in the back yard.  It took all 4 of us to use 4 tables and 10 chairs and dozens of tennis balls to simulate the real deal.  Dad commented that this was his favorite part of the wedding planning so far!  It was a good couple of hours of physical labor.

In the 72 hours I was home, it wasn't all wedding planning.  We did manage to watch a chick flick, clean out my bedroom closet with several bags for Goodwill, and go for a bike ride.  Like our matching sister shirts?

After this weekend, I feel much better about the whole planning process.  Everything is coming together quite nicely, and I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I'm so excited for the weekend, the special rehearsal dinner and the wedding day itself!  Thanks family for all of your love and support with the crazy amount of planning!

Work "Jack & Jill" Wedding Shower

We both felt so loved by so many people this last weekend.  I admit that I got a bit teary just thinking of having so many people we care about in one spot...just for us.  I mean, when else in life does this happen?  We are truly blessed!  If this is how I felt at a shower, I can only imagine what it will be like the weekend of the wedding!

Parker was such a trooper hanging out with 30 women (and one other guy) from my work.  My current teammates and former colleagues hosted the shower.  There were fresh flowers, pictures of us on the tables, and everyone wrote marriage advice to us.   Pat also made the sweetest slide show of pictures of Parker and I together.  (I asked her to have a copy to tweak for the wedding!)  The music was so perfect and there were even little quotes about marriage, love, and our adventures together.  So sweet!

We mostly mingled and ate cupcakes.  I held true to my promise to Parker that there would be no embarrassing games.  Of course everyone who met Parker for the first time loved him.  This whole next week the ladies were telling me how handsome he was and how perfect we are for each other.  

We opened cards and gifts together.  People might have commented on how type A and organized we were!  We had quite the system between us, though neither one of us really like to be the center of attention.  One of my favorite moments was at the end of gift opening.  Parker's response was a fist pound for me :)  I'm sure he was thinking something like this, "Victory, we made it.  I made it. I survived a work wedding shower with a bunch of women."  I love this man and all the ways that he makes me smile!  Thanks for being such a trooper this weekend my love. 

 

 

Wicked Date Night

We both have been looking forward to this rotation for several months now.  You see, this winter we found out that Wicked was coming to Denver.  Despite the fact that Parker has already seen the show once, he loved it so much that he promised to take me as many times as I wanted :)  Even though I have been trudging through the 400 page book for a while now, I didn't make my goal of finishing it before the show.  Oh well.  In most cases, the book is better than the movie, however this show broke that mold.  The show was sooooooooo good!

I picked up Parker from the airport in the afternoon.  He always is so stinkin' sweet.  What did he greet me with, but a beautiful bouquet of spring flowers?!

We had a few hours to shop for nice clothes.  Even though Parker has been bringing me small doses of clothes every time he has been visiting since February, we somehow only had dress shoes, shirts and ties for him.  We were definitely in need of some pants!  Our shopping trip proved to be very successful.  We even had time to sneak in a coffee date at Starbucks, were we also proceeded to change into our nice clothes.  Of course we looked a little crazy emerging in our theater outfits, but it just added to the adventure.

Parker had been researching nice places to eat that were close to the show.  We decided on the restaurant 1515.  It was a very swanky place!  The waiter brought us out some kind of homemade strawberry sherbet and a Parmesan cheese crisp "compliments of the chef."  We are both thrifty people, and of course Parker had a coupon for our dinner, but I was still so worried about the cost that he finally had to remind me that we are allowed to treat ourselves to a nice dinner every once in a while before my worrisome attitude ruined a delightful evening.  The food was to die for!  Parker ended up getting wild boar and I had black king fish.  Even our salads were the most delicious I have ever had. 

As mentioned before, the show was incredible!  Elphaba and Glinda had unbelievable voices, and I loved the sparkly costumes.  Even the set was impressive.  Of course Parker had the soundtrack playing for us the whole afternoon "just to get us in the mood", though I think we were both pretty excited to begin with.  I guess you could say that it was a wicked awesome date night in Denver!