First things first

Okay, before I go into honeymoon details, I figured I should start at the beginning of the wedding festivities and go from there.
We got to Hilton Head on Monday (two weeks ago) for a week of pre-wedding fun with the family and friends that were able to make more of a vacation out of it. The "big house" that my parents rented housed a ton of aunts, uncles, and cousins and each night we had an awesome meal prepared by various family members. A few highlights were definitely the s'mores (see ingenious method of chocolate melting in photos below) and Mexican night, where there was a delicious guacamole that rivals my own recipe-as much as I hate to admit it!



Once R got into his house on Wednesday, which was literally only a few houses down from the "big house", I got the girls villa, and a few more friends joined us, there were multiple party houses and even more fun. Of course, kareoke dominated the nightly festivities and there were definitely some hams on the microphones. There was also a small fire at R's house that caused some concern (to those of us who weren't consumed with selecting the best kareoke song) and got the boys up in the attic to check things out. Luckily, it was just the A/C overheating and nothing serious!
We held Beach Olympics on Thursday for those that could make it, and had a blast seeing how competitive everyone was. Lindsay and I dominated at Ladder Golf, as we had once before, and there was also a sponge relay where everyone raced to the ocean, filled up a sponge with water, and ran it back to pass to each team member before squeezing it out into a bucket until it overflowed. I was not so great at the water balloon toss and we also had a Bocce tournament. Although we didn't necessarily keep score, I definitely think Team Blue won! We each got bandanas to sport our team colors and it was fun to see how each person chose to wear theirs. Mine served as a headscarf to protect newly freshened-up highlights from the sun.
My wonderful bridesmaids and I went to lunch after some mani-pedi action Friday morning. We met at Sea Pines Center and dined at a restaurant called Truffles Cafe, which had awesome food and apparently very tasty Bloody Marys. It was so great to have some down time with all the gals and to chat about what's been going on in everyone's busy lives.
That brings us to the rehearsal on Friday evening...which, I'm afraid to say, will be a post for another day along with the rest of the wedding details. After being gone for two weeks, this newlywed needs to get some sleep before heading into the office tomorrow!