Our Love Plant

What nearly no one knows is that for our wedding favors, we potted a bunch of basil in these cute little silver galvanized buckets, because (according to what I read online), herbs represent things (who decides that, I wonder?) and basil represents love.

So my mom and her friend (and maid of honor in her wedding) Ginny potted all this basil, we put cute little stakes in each pot, and around that, looped everyone's name tag for the reception with table assignments. And it was two names to a bucket, one per couple...also keeping with the "love" theme.

No one would know this however, because of Wedding Day Rain Storm #1 ripped through just before the ceremony and destroyed them all. Fortunately, there is a silver lining here. My mom, Liz (my new sister-in-law), and Liz's mom salvaged as much of the basil as they could and nurtured it while we were galavanting around Europe. Liz planted some in her planters, which was growing beautifully when we were there for our mini pool party with Carla and Alison. And Liz set aside three buckets for Geoff and I to take back to NYC. After a month in those tiny buckets, they were looking a little sickly, so I repotted them and brought them back to live on our kitchen window sill. Don't they look pretty?


I've always wanted my own herb garden, and feel this is an excellent start. Now I have to just try not to kill it.

Stormy Weather

People say that something always goes wrong at a wedding, and I think when they said that, they were talking about ours. The days leading up to it were PICTURE PERFECT. Sunny, breezy, not at all humid and we had an awesome time setting up the tent and working on various projects, just PRAYING that Saturday's weather would be the same.

No dice.

Steamy, humid all day long (which meant I was wearing my hair UP. Kinda sad, as I wanted to wear it down, but I couldn't risk being cranky and hot so...up it went) and then moments before the ceremony, torrential downpour. There I was, waiting behind the bushes for my entrance and all I heard was "Get the bride in the house! Get the Bride in the house!!" - an order I followed immediately. The guests were ushered into Al & Liz's basement (!) to wait out the storm.

Here's Geoff enjoying a beer while he waited out the rain


And then, as my boss marveled to me later (and still does), "God made the rain stop long enough for you to get married!" It was perfect. I loved looking out the window of the office just in time to see all the guests out at the ceremony site with towels, wiping off their chairs. Awesome.


And the ceremony was lovely. I did lots of crying. As usual. And it was over so quickly and there we were, walking up the aisle, being NOT showered with the hydrangea petals we had set in a cone on everyone's chairs for this purpose 1) because they'd been ruined in the rainstorm and 2) because I guess we forgot to tell people that's what they were for. And we were married. And after less than 10 minutes of photos the rain started up again, so we headed in the house.


I never expected to have our cocktail hour in Al & Liz's kitchen, or in their dining room, where the remnants of 6 or 7 craft projects lay strewn all over the table. Or in the garage, where rumor has it one of the AMAZING catering staff from Emily's Catering upended a planter and set a boogie board on top of it to create a makeshift bar.

I can't even begin to list all the things that the rain ruined on our wedding day....The herbed popcorn and lemonade that was supposed to be served as people arrived, the aforementioned hydrangea petals to be showered down upon us, the candles around the pool, cocktail hour around the pool in general, the little basil pots we'd made for people to direct them to their tables and for a take home gift (since basil represents love), all the time we spent writing on garden stakes that basil= love, any time for pictures the way we wanted them (the only time there was for a photo of me & Geoff and my parents and brother was at the end of the night once we were all bedraggled). The list goes on.

We have to say, one of the most amazing parts of the wedding were the AMAZING photos that our photographers captured. Carla TenEyck and Matthew Wagner are good friends of ours and did SUCH an amazing job on our photos that people literally can't stop talking about them. Below are links to their blogs, where if you scroll down far enough you can find the slide shows they each put together for our wedding. I can't believe how fortunate we are to have such great photos! (And thanks in advance to them both for the few photos I stole from your blogs for this post!)

Carla's Blog
Matt's Blog

I clearly have not nearly done the day justice in this blog, but lets face it, most of the people reading this were actually there. Lets move on to the part that none of you were around for - the honeymoon!

It's for serious

We are definately getting married in 3 days. I know this because today is my last day at work until July. And because was up til 2am packing for our honeymoon. And because I can't focus on anything. And because makeup artists and DJs and all other types like that are calling me to confirm things.

And I can't even believe it! For those of you who will be there, please forgive me if I am completley in shock on Saturday, as I anticipate I will be. And please also pray for good weather. Or that I will be mentally prepared for bad weather.

Mark your calendars

We've set the date! Everyone plan on being in Middlebury, CT on the afternoon of Saturday June 14th to see Geoff and I get married. We now have the location, the date, the caterer, our photographer, the videographer and my dress (which i bought on accident with my mom over Thanksgiving. We were just going to "look", but when i tried on this dress, i cried unexpectedly and inexplicably, so i took that as a sign. Especially since I tried it on 4 times and cried 4 times). So I feel like we are pretty well on our way. And now I will do no more wedding planning until January, as December means Christmas, traveling, and moving into a new apartment. And that's enough for me.