The Wedding

 

 My younger sister Amy was married in Sackets Harbor, NY over Labor Day weekend in a beautiful setting.  Both Bride and Groom's families stayed in cottages and campers on Association Island in Eastern Lake Ontario, which was a special treat.  I wish I had more pictures of the island, but our stay was cut short by a surprise phone call from our Adoption agency...our baby was being born just a few hours after the wedding took place.  (Much more on that later;))  The whole weekend and even wedding was VERY considerate of the kids.  So here we have one of the pretty flower girls and the two sweet ring bearers.

 The handsome, proud ushers (instead of corsages, Amy had magnetic butterflies)

 The pretty bride and her sisters who walked her up the aisle, along with cute Kendall the other flower girl (Alissa and I searched and texted pictures back and forth for months before we found matching blush colored jackets with different camis and jewelry, we can overanalyze clothing for special events like it's nobody's business...exhausting.  My mom had her dress bought MONTHS before us, so obviously we didn't inherit the craziness from her. )

 Release of REAL monarch butterflies, that was. so. cool!

 A special moment between Amy and Frank, he shed tears through some of the ceremony, which didn't make it easy on the rest of us (I was already a mess walking up the aisle, so this put me over the top- but that's alright ;))

 Close up of the butterfly and the envelope he came in (these were one of many surprises for the kids, and Amy said Frank planned as many, if not MORE, of the surprises compared to her...big points new brother, we're a tough family to please - spoil our kids though, and you're IN ;))

 Family photo

 We love dressing up.

 Had to include this - me and my love, makeup still intact after church cry...can't say it stayed this way after the rest of the evening.  I couldn't help but to think of all my dad was missing.  Gotta continue handing that one back to God though.

The food was AMAZING!  I could probably do an entire post on the food.  They wanted to combine foods from Nebraska (where she grew up), New York (where he grew up) and Maryland (where they live now).  We stopped counting "courses"...wowzers, soups, salads, rolls, fruit, mac n cheese, BBQ, pork loin, corn on the cob, etc. and the cakes (there were 4 or 5) were delivered to New York from Maryland and had 8-10 layers!  Here Grant illustrates our love of the clams (which were the appetizers, Frank couldn't wait for the Nebraska families to experience the clams)...Amy assured me they had 2 dozen per person.  Ah!!!

And later I will add pictures of the dance.  They hired a DJ (which is special because my Uncle Les used to own a DJ company called Complete Music, and he'd get us to "rodee" (that could be a made up word) for him, which means "help with CDs, equipment, set up/break down")  Amy asked for song requests and so we sent her ours, which were heavy in the Christian music genre.  Her DJ called the week before the wedding and said that in the 20 years he's worked, he'd never ONCE had a request of Christian music and he was wondering if it was going to be a problem.  Frank said, "Yes."  (Yep, more points.)  So they sent out some emails to his nieces and nephews asking if they'd bring their mp3 playing devices (she didn't know if we were technologically "with it"- she learned quickly that we were ;)) and so they had it arranged for us to play our own playlists through the DJs equipment.  Adam hooked up his KindleFire and we were jamming to Tobymac and Mandisa in no time.  Amy loved it, and the kids were in heaven!!  Later the oldies were played and the kids tore up the floor while Chad and I joined in and even got in on some country line dancing. 

It was a very special weekend that went entirely WAY too quickly!  Sweet memories were made for sure!