All American!

And we're back on American soil!  My lovely sister, Lauri, got married last weekend at the Norfolk (Virginia, USA!!) Botanical Gardens.  And good gracious me, was it a beautiful day.  Our family isn't as Southern as we'd like to be, but we make a wedding rise to the challenge set forth by our foremothers in Steal Magnolias.  Sigh... I love that movie.  And I sob, SOB, every time.  "HERE!  HIT WEEZER!"  [Insert quiet sobs, my husband handing me the 14th box of tissues in the house and me muttering "You'll just never understand..." about 100 times]

But marriage is exciting!  I flew in from Bella Napoli to my hometown of Virginia Beach on Wednesday night and the minute I hit  American soil, there were events planned.  My mom can make any event worthy of 3 or more sub-events with careful thought, 10+ Tupperware containers and a cleverly placed cooler.  My mom LOVES three-ring binders.  Loves them.  It has become a cult following to see just how large of a notebook my mom can make for any given event.  For each of our weddings, the official wedding notebook began at 1" each time and gradually ballooned to 3" and even more!  We took the task of marrying off my sister VERY seriously. 

Well wed they did!  It was a seriously GORGEOUS ceremony.  Lauri looked more beautiful than I've ever seen her.  Seriously, if I weren't already married and it wasn't illegal, I'd contemplate marrying her!  But alas, John got there first.  Queue the white dress, a rendition of "Bless the Broken Road" that brought nearly every person to tears, and a supposed bald eagle sighting (Come on, really, Kara???  I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but it seemed a bit too good to be true) and you had the makings of a great wedding.  And then came the reception. 



My mom had booked the same wedding photographer that did Team Keenan's Wedding, Andi Grant (HEART!) and with her came a photo booth.  Now, no photo booth is worth its salt if there are not two critical ingredients: 1) sparkly hats 2) a rubber chicken.  People underestimate the value of a good rubber chicken.  Those people are fools.  And I don't even want to socialize with them.  For those of you who haven't scoffed at the rubber chicken, go buy one.  You'll find that it comes in handy in SOOOOO many situations.  Dinner parties, Mexican dinner nights, laying it casually on a really well decorated bookshelf.  Seriously, I could go on and on.  But those would be $7 very well invested.  Leave Pier 1, go get your rubber chicken.

A wedding brought me to America.  My family was so awesome, I extended my trip right before flying out and stayed.  Stay tuned for next week's exciting conclusion: America, the NC after party!!!