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!

The Perfect Guest Room

Summer is here and lots of people are ready to hit the road for summer vacation or visits with family and friends that live out of town.  I don’t know about you, but I love hosting my friends or family at my home.   I also have a huge appreciation and take notice when I am at someone else’s house and I can tell they made a special effort to make the guest room extra cozy and homey. I came across this adorable water color and blog post from Jess at The Aestate and had to share.  She covers the essentials to a cozy guestroom for your house guests and she hand paints these watercolors.  WOW.

 {Source}

1.  Fresh Flowers- Who doesn’t love a beautiful vase of wonderful smelling flowers next to their bedside?

2.  Luggage Rack- Have you ever noticed that just about every hotel you have ever been to has one of these?  They are great and can be found at Ballard Designs.

3. Waste Bin- Bedroom/Bathroom must have

4. Scented Candle & Matches-  I think for the bedroom this is nice, but definitely a must in the guest bathroom.  One of my favorite candles is the Tyler scent from www.tylercandles.com.

5. Tissues-  You never know when your guest might need them in the middle of the night.  This is a nice bedside touch.

6. Alarm Clock- This is a great back up just in case your friends or family has not joined the rest of the 21st century and does not have an alarm on their phone.

7. Pen & Paper- A hotel always supplies this don’t they?

8. XL Robe-  This is always a nice touch.  Most of your guests will probably not even bother using it, but I still think it is a great idea to supply one.

9. Good Reading Light- Your guests may read every night before they go to bed and you would hate to be the one to break them of their routine :)

10. Magazines- Being a lover of magazines, I always think this is a nice touch.  You probably have some laying around your house already, so just throw a couple recent ones in for leisurely reading.

11. Pitcher & Glass- I am always extremely impressed when I see this on a guest room bed side table.  But it makes so much sense.  Don’t we all bring a glass of water to bed with us every night? This is great if your guests forgot theirs or needs a refill at 2am.

12. Snacks- Any type of snack might be nice, but what I think is really special is an evening sheet turndown with a little bite of chocolate on their pillow. I love it when a hotel does that for me.

13.  Wooden Hangers-  This is a nice touch in the closet for your guest’s clothes. $4 for 8 pack at www.ikea.com.

 

Another nice touch can be placing your guests bath towels, hand towels and wash cloth on the end of their bed.  That works well if it is a one or two night stay.

What do you do for your guests to make them feel more at home? Do you have any special touches?

Memorial Day Luau

Memorial weekend is one of my favorite weekends. This year I spent the weekend at home in Orlando and had to work, but I did get to enjoy some of the holiday festivities. Matt's family is in town for the week taking on Disney World and they came to hang out with us on Sunday night. Matt has one sister who is married and lives in Montgomery, AL with three absolutely adorable young girls. They are 3, 5 and 13, so you can imagine how much joy they are getting out of being at Disney World for an entire week.

It was Ali, the 5 year old, birthday on Monday and we decided to have everyone over on Sunday night to Matt's house to grill out and have a little Luau to celebrate. I went last week to Party City to get a few decoration for around the house. They had an AMAZING selection of Luau themed decor-I could have spent hours and mucho dinero on all the goodies, but I opted for just a few things.

I left for work on Sunday and put Matt in charge. He had the goodies I had bought at Party City and I told him to make sure he has the patio looking really nice. I was a little nervous all day at work that he wouldn't get it all done, but he assured me it was taken care of. I get home and all the family is there and he has the blinds to the patio closed so that no one can see the "decorative surprise" yet. I sneak a peak out there and this is what I see:

Can you believe you this? So, I bought the coconut sippy cups, the paper plates, some lei's and the little grass skirt table cover. HE went out and picked the fresh Hibiscus from his yard, stuck flowers in the tiki torch center piece, brought palm trees from inside his house and stuck floating candles in the pool!!! I was FLOORED.



He would absolutely kill me for having this on the internet right now, but I was soo impressed. And don't think for a second that he wasn't patting himself on the back because he was.

So, as it has been doing for the last 7 days straight here in Orlando, it was pouring down rain. The floating candles were sunk, but we were still able to enjoy the theme under the covered patio. There was one other treat I bought at Party City for each of the 3 girls to enjoy. They turned out so cute.











Holly didn't like her's much. It was scratchy.















After the rain subsided a bit, we finally enjoyed some steak and shrimp on the patio, sang Happy Birthday to Alli and then came inside for the girls to show us a little ballet routine.

Yummy :)

Here is a little clip of their sweet moves in the hula outfits:

I would say that the Memorial Day Luau was a big success. The girls had a blast and thanked Uncle Matt and gave him a big kiss goodnight.


What did you do for the holiday weekend?

Stay tuned for next post. Headed to game 4 of the Magic/Cleveland game tonight with courtside seats. Look for me on TV. Can't wait. Go MAGIC!