Charleston Wedding

We spent this past weekend in Charleston for one of Lance’s best friend’s wedding.  We drove in Friday and went straight downtown to shop.  We met up with Justin for a minute and then had a quick dinner.  That evening Lance stayed back at the hotel with the kids so that I could attend Erica’s wedding shower.  Erica and Justin live in Hawaii so this was the first time a shower with family and friends could be held.  Erica was the only person I knew at the shower but everyone was very friendly and generous with their gifts.

Saturday morning we were slow going getting up.  We had breakfast at the hotel and then headed downtown to Justin’s parent’s house.  They purchased an older house a couple of years ago and have completely redone it.  It was beautiful.  From their house we headed to the farmers market.  We bought some kettle corn, a chocolate chip cookie, and some lemonade.  All nice healthy stuff!  Reese got to jump in the bounce house and go down the big inflatable slide.

 

Becca got in to town shortly after that and we met her at the hotel. I then met Lance at the rehearsal dinner.  It was a nice relaxing BBQ dinner and we had fun catching up with friends and making new ones!

Sunday morning Becca and I took the kids to the aquarium.  It was nice to get out but the aquarium (obviously) was nothing compared to the Georgia one. 

The first thing we did was the 4-d Happy Feet movie. 

    

That was a bust!  Both kids cried through out it.  Luckily we were the only ones in there.  Our favorite exhibit was the otters.  They were super playful and it was their feeding time right after we walked up.  We also got to see the big tank of fish being fed by two divers.  That was fun too.  The diver would swim right up to the glass and then open a water bottle type thing full of food.  The fish would swarm all around him gobbling it up.  We then headed back to the hotel for naps!  We all took a much needed nap while Lance spent the afternoon getting ready with Justin.  Then it was wedding time. 

The wedding was in a beautiful garden that was hidden between buildings.  Walking down the street you would have no idea it was there.  I, again, met Lance at the wedding.  I left a little early because I was afraid I would have a hard time finding a parking spot since parking is only on the street.  I lucked out and found a great spot so I took my time walking to the garden and then was there a little early.  

Charleston has some of the most beautiful gates.

Justin’s dad was amazing the whole weekend.  If you didn’t know better you would have thought he was the wedding planner! Ha! He was full of details, answers, ideas, etc. I tried to put Lance’s corsage on and it was flopping all around.  John put it on perfectly!

Justin and Erica were so calm all weekend.

Every thing was so simple but so beautiful. 

The ceremony was under this big beautiful tree. 

Erica and Justin met when they were both stationed in Arizona.  He was an Apache pilot in the Army and she is a Blackhawk pilot.  He has since left the Army and moved to Hawaii where Erica is stationed. 

They left the ceremony in a horse-drawn carriage and went around town getting some pictures made. 

The reception was a nice seated dinner after a cocktail hour.  We did not bring the camera with us to dinner because we did not want to have to keep up with it.  It was a very fun reception and we got to let our hair down a little bit.  Our before-kids-selves had a chance to make an appearance for a few hours.  But once the reception was over we knew that even though the party was going to continue downtown our with-kids-selves needed to head back to the hotel.  Our kids wake up early whether we come back at a decent time or an early morning time.  And we were hoping to head out early the next morning.

Monday morning we slept in later than we thought we would.  We were finally getting everyone in the car around 8:45 and pulling out around 9:00.  About 30 minutes out we stopped to get breakfast and Lance realized he did not have his wallet.  We dug through everything in the car, called the hotel to have them check our room, and called Becca to look through her car (since I had driven it the night before).  Luckily it was in Becca’s car!!  That was the longest 30 minutes of the whole weekend.  We were finally headed home around 10:30 and didn’t have too many problems after that.