The Wedding Aftermath

That's my bouquet, sitting in a vase on the kitchen windowsill. I decided to not preserve it. That dissembling then drying then reassembling and framing process can be expensive, and I just didn't think it would be worth the cost, nor am I that 'wedding-y.' I am enjoying the flowers at home and taking lots of photos of them.

Things are slowly returning to 'normal.' The out of town family has returned to their homes. My parents left Tuesday morning. They did so much for us and thanks to them we had a fantastic wedding.

Saturday night, after the wedding, SP and I returned home. Yes, home, not to a hotel. We decided that we'd rather save the money for the honeymoon than pay for a night at a hotel after the wedding. And, I think we figured we'd be tired and just want our own bed, plus our own kitchen to make soothing cups of tea, which is exactly what we did once we had changed into our jammies and unloaded the car.

We took our hot tea into the living room and opened gifts. My parents stayed with us in our guest room in the basement, so they watched the gift opening and helped us write down gift info. It was sort of like Christmas!!

One thing I've been thinking throughout the past 2 weeks is how lucky we are.

Not to get all sappy on the blog, and certainly I do not mean that I don't feel loved on a daily basis, but there is something so powerful and overwhelming about starting down that aisle and seeing all these faces - both family and friends - beaming at you, so happy for you, and just wanting your day to be perfect. Seeing them all gathered in one place just made it so crystal clear how very lucky I am to have such fabulous family and friends. So many were so helpful and giving and generous in helping us have the perfect day and right now I am at a loss for how to even begin thanking them.SP and I finally got to bed around 2 am after the wedding. Sunday morning, we were back to our usual Sunday routine of breakfast and Sunday paper - we were just really tired. Unfortunately, EPAS and her family had already set off for home so we were unable to spend any more time with them. SP's mom was returning home on Sunday. Our out of town friends were headed home. My brother and his family were still here - they came over in late morning and spent the day here. We ate leftover food from the rehearsal dinner and wedding (Sewickley Speakeasy was kind enough to box up all the extra appetizers) and Uncle SP was overwhelmed by his newly official niece and nephew playing Wii games with him.

Later Sunday evening, we all watched the hockey game together - I think we might be getting my niece into hockey! My nephew played with his new toy from his grandma, a Star Wars mini light saber, and Uncle SP was soooo cool because he put it together for him.

It was nice to spend some non-wedding time with them since they live in GA and we see them only 1-2 times a year.

Monday SP went to work and my mom helped me start to clean up and organize the house. We are going on a honeymoon soon, but right now, I can't imagine how other couples depart right away on a trip! We are glad we decided to spend some time at home after the wedding and before the honeymoon.
Sadly, the top layer of our cake - the layer we are supposed to freeze for a year - had a little sliding problem on Monday (it was fine for the wedding; this happened post wedding, after it sat in our kitchen for 2 days!). It was a problem like SP's birthday cake! We tried to save it, but it wasn't looking too good, so then we decided to eat half our top layer and freeze half for next year (GASP!!! Yes, we are eating half our top layer!) but when SP moved it out of the box and tried to slice it, it all fell apart. We now have a plastic container filled with mangled cake to munch on and the other mangled half is currently in the freezer. Oops! Why did we decided to eat it now? We love this cake and the icing and were afraid that after a year it just wouldn't taste as yummy, so we figured we'd enjoy at least half of it!!!

Look for posts soon on our honeymoon - I'll reveal our destinations later but for now I will say that we are very glad we decided to wait a bit for a trip to Europe (save some more money, hope for a better exchange rate) since the Iceland volcano is messing up air travel. We are staying in the USA and going to what are supposed to be 2 lovely, romantic places and we are driving, not flying - so, no, we are not going to Hawaii like many newlyweds!