Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Keri & CJ's Wedding: Part I, II, & III

Keri and CJ got married last Saturday!  She looked so beautiful, they are so happy, and it was an amazing party.  I think that weddings should just be a really fun party with all of your family and friends--mission accomplished for Keri and CJ.  We've been planning this wedding all summer, so it's kind of weird that it's actually come and gone.  It was kind of a week long extravaganza, so here's the week of wedding:
Part I: Temple day on Thursday
Thursday night Keri went to the temple, so Toni, Brittany, and Ty stayed home with the kids.  They had a picnic  outside and craft time inside.  They all, somewhat successfully, made a beautiful necklace that they are showing off in this picture.
Ty and Josie took a well needed nap for a while.
The girls look like they were caught red-handed eating the box of cereal.  It's really hard to get mad at two cute faces like this.
Part II: Prepping the yard and decorations on Friday
Friday was game time!  We had to get everything done, put together, and ready to go for the big day.  Our biggest task of the day was blowing up, tying, and putting on sticks 100 giant yellow and white balloons.  We were prepared for this to take most of the day (which it did), but we became really good at it.  Thanks goodness we borrowed the air blower from my school to blow all of the balloons up or else we all would have been passed out on the floor.  These balloons were Keri's vision for her wedding and it ended up looking awesome!  I'm really bummed I didn't take a picture of the final product of them lining the driveway, but I have plenty of pictures along the way.
The kids wanted to play with the balloons all week long; surprisingly, they only popped a couple of them.
We stored the blown up balloons in Tera's room all day long.  By the end of the day, her room was filled from floor to ceiling with balloons!  It looke awesome!
Of course with my family we always have to turn everything into a competition, so we started racing to see who could blow up and tie their balloon the fastest.  Kyle's method was to coat his hand with lotion first to help tying the balloons; he thought it was quite successful.  All of our methods joined together got us through, what we thought would be the hardest part of the day.
Once all the balloons were filled we then had to attach them to the poles and put a bow on each one.  Here's a shot of the balloons in their final stage before they went on the driveway.  We didn't put them up until Saturday afternoon to avoid having them warp in the sun.
The second biggest task of the day was the flowers.  We're so lucky that Shelly was able to come down to be our flower coordinator for the wedding.  She did the flowers for my wedding too and they are always beautiful.  We went to the flower mart in Carlsbad early in the morning and bought everything we needed.  By the end of the day Shelly turned this big pile of flowers into...
this!  She added more yellow gerber daisies on Saturday to each bunch.  That way the daisies weren't wilted and sad looking.  Isn't she amazing?!  She even let us help and try out our flower arranging skills.
Before the flowers could go in, we had to fill the jars with lemons and tie blue bows.  Keri did an excellent job with preparing the jars.
While flowers and balloons were getting done inside, lights, lanterns, toole, and tents were getting done outside.  We hung about 24 strands of lights across the yard and hung paper lanterns from them.  These were some of the last lights to go up and Kyle was the man in charge of making sure they worked.  It truly is a whole family and friends project to put on the party!
Part III: Taco Time Party
By 7:00 Friday night, we were ready for the pre-party; CJ catered a dinner for about 50 family and friends.  It was Taco Time!  We had yummy street tacos, rice, beans, and the best part--churros.  This is the rehearsal dinner, but we don't really rehearse anything except eating and having fun.  It did give us one more night of enjoying the amazing decorations and the yard.  Here are some pictures of the party goers:
Here's my dad enjoying the feast!
Keri & CJ's friends (Roxanne, Brittany, Richelle, Mike, Sarah, Becca, JR, Brady, and Brittany)
CJ's family (mom, Laurie, Nick, Milo, Keri, Bailey, and CJ)
Aaron, me, Brian, and Tera
Shelly & Bodie
Mom with CJ's brother and family
Tami & Eric
Aaron & Bailey (she was a little on the crazy side Friday night)
CJ's friends
Toni & Aaron
Emily and baby Josie
Brittany, Keri, and Sara
Mom & Dad
Keri's friends

SISTERS!!!


Miller Family picture (minus baby Josie who slept like an angel during the party)

Once the party was done, there was still one more task to finish: bouquets.  Shelly whipped these bouquets together in no time.  They looked awesome!  Keri's is the big puffy one and the smaller ones are for the bridesmaids.  I think we finished around 11:00 and then headed off to bed to get ready for the WEDDING DAY!!

I'll post Part IV tomorrow with pics of the big day :)

1 comment:

Trish said...

I love your family! They're so much fun!