Thursday and Friday, before the Big Day!

(*sidenote: start at the bottom of this post and work your way up. It will make more sense. Can anyone tell me how to do this correctly?!)
Memories!! (sing the song with me, everybody: "like the corners of my mind"). These 4 teenagers were the flower girls and ring bearers at my wedding 9 years ago! Justin and Adam are my twin cousins who are now seniors in high school. Their sister Jessica was my flower girl, along with my other cousin Abbee. Yikes! I feel so old!

Josh owes a whole lot to my cousins Abbee and Jessica, who helped him entertain the kids. They were so so helpful and I could never repay them!

More fam at the rehearsal dinner (Uncle Scott, Aunt Rhonda, cousin Amanda, brother Zachary). Since so many people came from far away, my parents wanted to feed them at least one meal.

Here is my dad and his mom, my Mamaw. She wasn't going to come to the wedding but decided about 2 weeks before that she wanted to come. Thank goodness my uncle offered to let her stay at his lakehouse. If you want to see me in 40 years, look at her!

Everybody kept coming up to me, telling me what a wonderful husband I had! Some people even suggested I send him on a honeymoon alone to Jamaica (where Micah and Erica went) after this weekend! Josh had to wrangle these crazy kids all weekend by himself. I was so busy documenting the weekend with pictures, singing, helping my mom, being a bridesmaid, etc. that I wasn't a very good parent. Thanks Josh, for being so awesome!!

This is my beautiful cousin, Amanda. She should be Miss Kentucky!! I was so glad she and my aunt and uncle came. We hadn't seen each other in a long time.

This is one of my favorite pictures of all time!! My dad was praying before the meal, and here is Brady praying too. Precious!

A couple of hours later we had the reheasal dinner. You can't see them well, but that afternoon my mom and I and some of her awesome friends made the centerpieces. They were iron votive holders, and we got fresh flowers to decorate them. There are orchids through the top, and roses and hydrainges in the bottom. My mom is very particular (because she is basically another Martha Stewart), but I thought they were beautiful! We had the dinner at the golf club in the same community where everything else was. It was a big room with windows all around. We had dinner, saw a great slideshow of Micah and Erica growing up, and I sang. Several people got up and talked about the two kiddos also.

Here is Erica and her mom arriving AFTER the rehearsal was over! No, her aunt was supposed to bring her mom, and she had car trouble. So Erica's mom drove herself and got a flat tire! Erica had to go and pick her up, which made them all late. We had practiced some things, but we finished once the bride came! :)

Grace was the flower girl, and here she is practicing for her big day! She was quite serious about it, and had to do everything, say everything, and wear everything just like Erica did.

Fri afternoon was the rehearsal. The wedding was on a lake, actually on a dock. There was a big tent covering where the guests would sit, and the wedding was on the end of the dock in the water. Up behind the tent was the yacht club, where the reception was. Here we are getting instructions on what to do. I could've led this little meeting, seeing how many weddings I've been in.

Erica gave all the bridesmaids these super soft robes with our initials on them. Grace had to wear mine.

It was really hard for Grace to sit at the restaurant for hours, so she played "restaurant" at the table, making a mess for my mom to clean up. She also wandered around the place singing and exploring.

These are some of the girls at the luncheon. Let me point out here that it was Micah who insisted on having 9 groomsmen! Mr. Friendly he's not, but he sure is close to a lot of his buddies. Poor Erica! At the rehearsal dinner, every guy got up and talked and each one said they thought THEY were Micah's best friend. Anyway, the place where we had the luncheon was wonderful! It had the best food!

Friday morning we had the Bridesmaid's Luncheon, so we took Brady and all the men to the hotel where my grandmother and cousins were. They swam at the pool while we lunched.

Josh and Brady finally arrived! Josh had been complaining for weeks about the fact that he had to fly from Dallas to Knoxville with Brady. Never mind the fact that I had done it before, by myself, with 2 children and a layover! Of course, guess what? Brady slept the whole plane ride over to TN! But we sure were glad to see them!

My dad and brothers clowning around while my mom and I do all the work!

Here is my mom, busy as a bee! You can't really tell, but she and I put gift boxes together for all the people staying in different lake houses and at the hotel. They had snacks, candy, and water in them and there was an itenarary tied onto the front of it. My brothers delivered the boxes to the guests the next day. My mom and I also had to wrap 9 (yes, NINE) groomsmen's gifts because of course my brother knows nothing about details! He probably didn't even pick out those gifts.

The 3 bedroom lakehouse where our fam stayed. The kids had plenty of grass to run around on and did singing performances off the big porch out front.

I don't even know where to begin about this weekend! Grace and I drove over near Knoxville, TN with my parents to the lake where the wedding would be on Thursday. All of the festivities were in this little lake village, so my mom got our family a big lake house to stay in. It was wonderful because we weren't sitting in hotel rooms bored for days.