Katy and Luke's Wedding Celebration 2012

Katy and Luke got married! Actually, they got married a month ago in Katy's hometown of Beaufort, South Carolina.  While I have been to Beaufort twice before to visit her parents, I was not in attendance at the wedding ceremony, but I think we can all agree that the bride and the groom looked beautiful.

Beaufort, South Carolina, August 25, 2012

In what seems to be a new wedding trend, the couple had multiple receptions at different locations in the country for the convenience of their family members. There were celebrations in South Carolina (where the bride is from), West Virginia (where the groom is from), Texas, and Nashville, Tennessee (where the couple lives with their awesome dog Wally).

They held the Nashville reception at the Country Music Hall of Fame which is super cool and beautiful. Definitely one of the best venues I have been to for a wedding. All the guests enjoyed walking around and reading the plaques on the walls dedicated to famous country music singers. The powers that be waited too long to give Dolly one. 1999!

"Let the Circle Be Unbroken" at the Country Music Hall of Fame

Dinner was ah-mazing. Wait, let me say it again. Ahhhhhhhhh-mazing. I have never craved wedding food after I returned home. I am so sad I am not eating it right now. It was family-style and I had short ribs, cheddar mac and cheese, crispy buttery brssel sprouts, acorn squash, and Southern-style biscuits. Everything was as delicious as you would hope it would be. As if that wasn't enough to invade my dreams forever, Luke and Katy had 5 flavors of cake. We each got one flavor and passed them around so I tasted and loved: Velvet Elvis (with peanut butter ganache), lemon vanilla, chocolate, banana, and vanilla with raspberry creme filing. The Velvet Elvis and the lemon vanilla blew us away.

Rob helping me dish out the family-style (because I left the table to take this picture)

After dinner there was a lot of dancing and rejoicing. I met Katy in law school and we took numerous trips together to the beach for Spring Break, a cruise that went to the Caribbean and we even went to Costa Rica over Winter Break one year. We went to dinner hundreds of times with our friends to celebrate birthdays or for no reason. We had as many game nights. We went to 6 law school dances, and once I even talked to her into going to the Fox Field horse races. After we graduated, we moved to New York, and for a while we kept up the good times, but then she moved to Nashville.

Suffice to say, I had very high expectations for her future husband. When I met Luke for the first time in May, I was delighted. I couldn't have come up with a better match for Katy if I'd dreamed him up. She's a catch and so is he. I look forward to adding him to our law school vacation team.

Katy and Luke rocking out at the Country Music Hall of Fame

Welcoming Luke to the team: Rob, Audra, Brian, Katy, Luke, Sarah, Donald, and me

Oh, and one more thing. Best. wedding. guest book. ever. And this is the 37th wedding I have attended so I am not messing around here. They had us sign a guitar. Awesome in the first place, and doubly awesome because of the venue. Thank you for inviting us to a super cool wedding!

Guitar Wedding Guestbook

Wedding Guestbook Time Capsule 2010

Kevin and I celebrated our 1st anniversary a week early in Niagara Falls.  But then on the actual day of our anniversary we ate some (badly preserved, really gross) wedding cake and then went to the new Brooklyn Bridge Park to take 1-year anniversary pictures and break open our "Message in a Bottle" guest book.

The idea was that instead of just writing in a wedding guest book, guest would write us a message, put it in the wine bottle, and we would read the messages on our first anniversary.  It fit nicely with our Cape Cod beachy theme, complete with Nantucket Mojitos (Kevin's from Cape Cod + I'm Cuban), beach accents in our centerpieces, and our starfish wine stopper wedding favor.  We actually used the wedding wine stopper in the wine bottle guest book.

"Message in a Bottle" guest book


Wedding favor starfish wine stopper


One-year anniversary photo in our then-borough of Brooklyn

Some people asked how we planned to get the messages out. Fair.  I figured we could smash the wine bottle and fish out the messages.  This turned out to be a little trickier than I thought it would because we didn't want to break glass inside our apartment, and breaking it outside could cause us to lose all the messages. So we decided to break it outside, and in a plastic bag.  Brilliant except it's still hard and weird to break a glass bottle outside. Luckily we live in New York, so we found a relatively unpopulated spot, and no one paid too much attention while Kevin smashed his plastic bag with a hammer.

Kevin showing the bottle who's boss

There were a lot of messages so I decided to be completely biased about it and post those of people who regularly comment on our blog.  Luckily these were also some of the cooler ones.

Mom and Dad


Kevin's mom


Chrissy and Jason


Lukas and Sarah


Robin (and Cory)