A Wedding Story Begins

Remember our family backyard softball game? Well, the yard was transformed this past weekend for a magical garden party wedding! Remember Larissa and West (and a few more engagement photos)? Larissa has been Shannon's best friend for over twenty years, and her dream wedding location was Poet's Garden (which is now Shannon's backyard). It pays to know the right people, and Shannon is definitely 'the right people.' (More about that in a coming post.)

I was the lucky-ducky photographer for most of the event, so I'll be telling the wedding story in photos over the next week or two. (This was a BIG event for 'us' and many people are (impatiently) awaiting photos to appear in this corner of cyberspace, so you'll be viewing/hearing about this one in spades.)

I want to start by sending a quick shout-out to the team behind the scenes. My sister, Holly, worked 13+ hours straight the day of the wedding (she's an old pro). Her daughter, Ilex, was there for a few days helping with child-care and being my mom's right hand (wo)man. Her son, Drake, was the go-to guy and Ben's right hand man. Book club girls were a life-saver: Cheris and Carolyn were Shannon's can-do team the day of the wedding. Domini had the (possibly harder) task of watching Shannon's dogs.

My dad was so gracious to let all of this craziness happen at his home, and he had a bunch of work behind the scenes. Mowing alone took hours. (And he arranged for a fly-over photoshoot during the reception! His photographer and pilot friends were so kind to do that for us!) My mom had her whole house transformed into a ladies' dressing room and provided lunch for all the women.

Larissa and West had a large, hard-working team of family and friends helping out with so many other aspects of the wedding.

A huge shout-out to my hubby for being so much help to me. After a full week of daddy responsibilities (including two trips to urgent care with Luke), he went to the grocery store early in the morning (we had nothing in the house) and then fixed me an awesome breakfast the day of the wedding. He even packed me a cooler full of yogurt and other snacks and stocked my mom's fridge with Dr. Pepper. He dropped me off (telling the other girls to make sure I drank lots of water and put my feet up occasionally) and then went to Costco to get me new memory cards for my cameras (we were having memory card issues). And then he manned the boys for 12 hours (including a re-check of Luke's finger at urgent care, fishing, and baths at the end of the day). Oh, and he had the Mustang all clean (and running) and in place for the bride and groom's get-away car. Did I mention my awesome husband? Grin.

Stay tuned for the rest of the story....