Rehearsal recap

Okay, back to the wedding...

We had the rehearsal at the croquet lawn at Port Royal. The girls ran a little late, but I guess they couldn't have done it without us! It was all because I was trying to finish the slideshow of photos from me and Ryan growing up, which never ended up working out despite numerous, very helpful friends and family members trying to help. I will try to post it on here but it's huge! Anyway, we paired everyone up and practiced walking up and down the "aisle" a few times. Our minister from Orlando made the trip up for us and helped us through the whole ceremony flow. He even went as far as starting to say the vows but I stopped him because I didn't want to jinx anything!

me and Dad, practicing our walk to the croquet lawn almost about to say our vows! me and my beautiful bridesmaids

After perfecting our walks, we headed off to Aqua Grille & Lounge for the most delicious apps and dinner. They passed around fried green tomatoes, lobster rangoons, and crab cakes while the bridal party and all of our aunts and uncles arrived. Then we all sat down for a plated dinner and gave our thank-you gifts to our parents and bridal party.
I got my aqua and coral wish, with the invitations to the dinner and the matching placecards I made having an awesome aqua and red coral design. We also borrowed some coral-colored star fish from the "big house" to help in our decor. This is the last night I was Kristin Nathan!
me and my awesome sorority sisters, taking a photo break

my favorite gift was to our parents...a canvas print of a photo I took of the Harbor Town lighthouse, the ultimate symbol of Hilton Head, made to look more like a watercolor painting, to remind them of our destination wedding.

The bridesmaids all got porcelain ring dishes with their first initial hand-painted in the center. I actually received one with an engagment ring in the middle from my Aunt Elaine when I got engaged and I love it so I wanted my girls to have one, too. They also got green wraps (which came in very hand when the cold front came through the next day) and brown dangly earrings to wear at the wedding.

The boys all got Tervis Tumblers with their favorite school of choice for the patch. Of course, I couldn't have a gator tumbler on my blog so I am showing UGA. We also got the boys the green paisley ties they wore in the wedding.

Small interruption

Sorry for the lapse in wedding posts...Ryan and I have basketball tickets again this season and tonight was already opening night! It's crazy to have NBA basketball starting with college football in mid-season. I must admit, though, that it was a very dissapointing game. I was not impressed with the entertainment portion and we (the Magic) didn't play very well, although the woman in the skin-tight, low-cut, laced-back, zebra-print, short-short-short mini dress made the people watching very interesting.

I'll resume wedding downloads tomorrow, when I have a bit more time before bed. I promise!

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!

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig

I can't believe it's already all over and we are back home again! It seems like forever ago that we got married and I'm amazed we were just in St. Lucia yesterday, wrapping up the honeymoon. I have been spending the entire day trying to settle back in, do countless loads of laundry and peruse all of the AMAZING photos from the whole wedding week that everyone posted while I was away. All I can say is that I have an awesome group of photographers for family and friends, because the pics are amazing!
I definitely have some of my own to post, so stay tuned while I try to download and organize everything.

And we're off!

We are all packed up and heading out the door for HHI. I am so excited and can't wait to see everyone there. If you need to reach me this week, call my cell phone. Otherwise, I'll be back in two weeks with (hopefully) some great things to post! xoxo

They're Here!

Hooray! I got an email from our photographer last night that they were able to post our image gallery from the engagement session. I already went through the slideshow and gallery (link below) to see them all. While I think our photographer did an amazing job, and Ryan looked so handsome and did so well for the shoot, I don't know what was wrong with me - my smile was so fake in a lot of the photos and I didn't use teeth for a lot of them. I was so nervous and wanted it to go so well that I think I was trying too hard. Oh, well...at least there are some great ones in there of the two of us. Now I know what to do for the wedding photos...relax!
Enjoy: http://wscottchester.com/slideshows/kristinandryan_eng.

Finishing touches

I struggled to find the perfect rehearsal dinner dress but finally found this one at Bloomingdale's by BCBG...
It was almost impossible to find shoes that matched, or even coordinated, so I decided to go a totally different color and bought these great heels from Nine West...

I also found some pretty dangling earrings on clearance at Anthropologie that match the shoes (almost) perfectly, so I think I am all set for that evening. Except for a bag...I just realized none of my little purses will match. Hmmm...I may need to go shopping one last time before we leave!