Wedding Weekend | Rehearsal Dinner | Arnaud's Restaurant

 

 

We had our Rehearsal Dinner at Arnaud's in the French Quarter of New Orleans.   The menu gave everyone a taste of what great New Orleans food is all about.  The night was filled with incredible food, strong cocktails, good laughs, tear-jerker speeches, beautiful flowers and amazing friends and family.  Oh,  and also a really good surprise.  We had the perfect evening.

 

 

 

 The Arnaud's Ballroom

Great Friends 

 

My Handsome Hubby who had me crying within the first hour of dinner with a very heartfelt speech 

 

 

The Speech 

 and lets raise our glasses for a toast

 

My dear friend Tiffany who was also my excellent photographer for the night! 

The gorgeous flowers and centerpieces done by my incredibly talented friend, Hayden at Geraldine's

 

And I'm a bit teary eyed with my high school girls plus Tiffany 

My brothers and my sister and law and soon to be other sister in law!!!  

And here comes the surprise… the band busts through the doors and we have a surprise 2nd line, a New Orleans tradition, that we take from the restaurant back to the Ritz Carlton hotel

 

 

 

A few people hopped in the rickshaws! 

 

 

The 2nd Line

 

Heading down Canal St with a light rain

 

 

It was such a fun surprise.  We had a blast walking through the streets of the French Quarter and caught a little rain at the end which made it feel so surreal.  We met up with other friends and family at the Davenport Lounge in the Ritz Carlton for an after dinner drink and then called it a night to make sure we got our beauty sleep.

Wedding Weekend | Bridal Luncheon | Galatoire's

I wanted to give a few snapshots of our events during our wedding weekend in New Orleans.  We had a lot of out of town guests that arrived on Thursday evening and met us at the Ritz Carlton for cocktails and appetizers at the courtyard bar.  It was so much fun seeing everyone get into town and ready to kick off the weekend.  We had the bridal luncheon on Friday morning at 11:30 am at Galatoire's to really get the festivities started! 

 

The ladies did a beautiful job setting up the tables and gave my favorite Tyler Candle in the "Tyler" scent to all the girls as a gift. 

 

Pretty center pieces 

 

Me with the wonderful hosts for the luncheon

 

Bride and MOB

 

The Malone Girls-- My new SIL, Melanie, MIL, Sandy, and niece Kayla

 

My gorgeous and incredibly impressive MOH and cousin :)

 

On the Menu:

 

My childhood BFF's 

 

My DG girls + an adopted one :)

 

Me giving the girls their bridesmaids gifts

So fun!

 

Cousins!

Pretty girls

 

 

Here are the goodies that I gave the bridesmaids for standing by my side on my big day :)

 

1. Mudpie Strapless Cover-Up | 2. Tan Towels | 3. Batiste Dry Shampoo | 4. Lucite Catch all Tray | 5. Kendra Scott Earrings | 6.  The Final Product

 

I would not recommend the Mudpie Cover- Up.  Those were given for all of us to wear while we were getting ready together on Wedding day, but they were quite see-through.  They don't appear that way on the model, but they were.  The tan towels and dry shampoo are two of my most favorite products to use and I had a feeling they would come in handy for the weekend.  The lucite tray is a great for lots of things, but is wonderful to throw jewelry in and put on your vanity.  I loved the Kendra Scott designs because she allows you to choose whatever color combination you would like.  Check out her website and go to the color bar. There is every combination imaginable.  The earrings shown were not the colors I used.  

 

I hope you enjoy and I will be back with more photos from the weekend soon!

Wedding Gift Ideas

 

As wedding season is here and I’m always interested in creative and original ideas to give to the bride and groom for wedding presents, I thought I would share a few neat gifts we received.  We received tons of wonderful gifts and of course lots of things from our registries, but these are a few that did not come from our registries and that I had never seen done before.

 

This is a beautiful tray that has our Save the Date printed on it.  It is so original and I couldn’t get over what I great idea it was.  It is from a company called Marye-Kelley out of Houston.  They decoupage just about anything you can think of and have wonderful gift ideas on their site. 

These are two different lamps we received as gifts.  Again, this was not on our registry;  but who can’t always use another great lamp.  I thought these were beautiful.  The one on the left comes from Orient Expressed in New Orleans and the other from Judy’s at the Rink.

 

This was a really fun idea from Uncommon Goods.  It’s personalized with our names, wedding date, and our first dance song. {Our song was actually Ain’t that A Kick in the Head by Dean Martin}  There are a lot of great personalization gifts and fun ideas on this website too.

 

  We had someone take our wedding invitation which is shown below and send it to Judy’s at the Rink in New Orleans and they engraved it in the Lucite tray that you see below.  I was fascinated by this gift.  You see wedding invitations framed and things like that, but I had never seen one done like this.  I just loved it!  What a great keepsake.

  

I absolutely love this.  My aunt owns an art gallery in New Orleans so we were very lucky to get such a nice gift but it has a lot of meaning too.  This picture was painted of the French Quarter and more specifically, Arnauds Restaurant, where we had our Rehearsal Dinner.  You can find more of Meredith Keith’s work here at my Aunt’s art gallery.

 

Below is a monogrammed door bell! How gorgeous is that???  I love it.  They knew that we would soon be building a house and came up with this thoughtful gift.  I’ve never seen one like it.  Unfortunately, I can not find a website or contact information for the designer of this doorbell.  It is by Rae Rae Miller and it came from Mobile, AL.  Please let me know if you can find any information on them.

 

I love the gorgeous candlestick from Orient Expressed in New Orleans and the painting of a bride by Lynette Collins Walker.  It was so wonderful to get great gifts for around the house.  Things like art, lamps and candles are something I can always use in our home.

I hope some of these gifts gave you some great ideas for your next wedding.  I loved sharing our gifts and wish that I could share them all because they truly were spectacular.  I got so many great entertaining items and am ready to throw my first summer bash with all of my fun new gifts! 

From Adams to Malone

I got married since the last time I've posted for you guys!!! We had the most amazing weekend of our lives.  I went from an Adams to a Malone!  Check out our pictures from our incredible photographer at http://creativeimagesproofing.com/gallery/annie-and-matt-engagement-758603

Dress Shopping!!!

I am so excited to be heading to my old town of Atlanta this weekend to go wedding dress shopping!! My amazing cousin, Alex, put it all together for us and I am so excited that she is flying into town from New York City! It is going to be such a fun girls weekend.

Here is a few images I love:

Which one do you like best?? I already have my favorite. I've been told that many times the bride ends up with a dress that is totally different than any of the pictures she brings in. What was your experience??

fiancé

Matt and I have been together for 3.5 years and on our trip to France this June he became my fiancé. I wonder if in his well thought out plan, he thought about the word fiancé coming from the French language and felt it only appropriate to propose in France. Yeah, I don't think so. However, it was in his plan to propose in the most romantic city in the world and he put together an absolutely unbelievable engagement night. It was perfect. Here's the story:

It was our 2nd night in Paris and we had dinner reservations with the five of us on the trip (Me, Matt, Bryan, Erin and Mom) for 8pm. We had all agreed to meet in the bar of our hotel early to have some wine before we left for the restaurant. When we got down there, my Mom told us about these gardens that were right by our hotel and on our way to dinner, that the travel agent said we had to go see and get pictures at because they were gorgeous. Because we were a group of 5, we needed 2 cabs. It just so happened that Matt and I got in the first cab and our concierge had told the cab driver in French (which I wish I could say that I understood) that he was to stop at the Jardin du Luxembourg first and wait for us and then bring us to the restaurant for dinner. I was under the assumption the rest of the group was right behind us and joining us at the gardens as well. They were not. They were all in on it together. Matt and I walked into the gardens and as I turned to go pose for a picture of this gorgeous public garden with the Eiffel tower in the background, he was down on one knee asking to spend the rest of our lives together! We hugged and kissed and smiled and shed a few tears and I said YES and admired my beautiful ring for a long time! Then we got some great pictures...


Back in the cab, showing off the bling to Mr. Cabbie and headed to dinner to meet the rest of the group and celebrate!

He did so good :)

We had dinner at a beautiful restaurant called Maison Blanche that had tons of windows that looked out over the city and a great view of the Eiffel tower that lit up at night. Mom, Bryan & Erin had champagne waiting for us at the table for an Engagement Toast!

Picture with the Eiffel Tower in the background

We decided to continue our celebration beyond dinner and head over to the buddha-bar for some fancy cocktails.
Mint from my Mojito as a new hair piece
We then decided it was a Saturday night in Paris and we should hit the club scene. So we walked to the VIP Room and danced and celebrated and hung with midget superman.


Mom and I admiring the ringErin and I getting the dance floor started
Matt joined us on the dance floorCELEBRATING!!
The whole evening was perfect and I absolutely loved being able to celebrate with my family. It was very special to me that ALL my family actually had a hand in this occasion. My oldest brother, Brandon, was instrumental in actually helping Matt find the ring. Bryan secretly helped Matt scope out the perfect setting in Paris. My mom was the ring GUARD and couldn't let that thing out of her sight for the first 48 hrs in Paris and of course good ole' pops had to say YES when Matt asked for his permission to marry me!

We are so excited to begin planning the festivities and enjoy the next 9 months of being engaged! We are so happy and so blessed to have such wonderful friends and family and thank you to all that have already sent your well wishes.