Baubles

Pictured to the right are our brand new baubles as a result of the wedding. The Duke chose two bands for my engagement ring, one on either side. He had them soldered together the week before the wedding and the product was perfection! Kudos to The Duke on the perfect finishing touch! For his wedding ring, I chose a simple yellow gold band with a small milgrain trim on either side. It was engraved with the date of the wedding and the scripture that was read by a dear friend during the ceremony. Before pictures on our wedding day, we had a "first look", where we exchanged surprise gifts for one another. The Duke had the diamond out of my Mimi's engagement ring encircled by smaller diamonds and had the pendant put on a delicate necklace to match my ring. The gesture was so sweet and was one of the few moments that brought me to tears. The Duke's favorite (and only) jewelry pieces he actually wears are watches, so I surprised him with an Automatic Bulova Skeleton watch. He rarely buys anything for himself (especially jewelry for that matter), so I wanted to do something special for him. This present is the only present from me I have ever been able to keep a secret until I gave it to him. I was pretty impressed with myself and it made giving him the watch all the more special! All pieces will be treasured by us forever and will always bring back happy memories of the first time we saw each other on our wedding day.

The Remains of The Cake

There is only one word to describe our wedding cake: divine. I have pictures of the cake, but I refuse to upload until I have the one that does this cake justice. As previously mentioned, we love Harvest Moon Cafe. Lucky for me, they also have a bakery :)

The cake contained: two layers of red velvet, one layer of strawberry, and one layer of vanilla cake. The whole confection was iced with cream cheese icing and it was stunning. Our wedding planner recommended enjoying our top layer now and buying a new one for every anniversary. Sounds great to me. In order to distract myself from eating the whole dang thing, I was forced to take it to school with me and share it with the teachers (the top layer, that is; there was not a single crumb of the rest of it that made it out alive). Pooter... Weight Watchers has really killed my ability to gorge obscene amounts of cake in one sitting.

A family friend of The Dukes' created his cake and it was also amazing. It was modeled after the sand castle The Duke built at the beach and hid my ring in on the day he proposed. A picture will be posted shortly!

Honeymoon at Hawthorne

Since I have to go back to school and The Duke has to go back to work on Tuesday, we decided to hold off on the honeymoon until after my graduation date in May. As a substitute, we stayed in a charming hotel on Broad Street and had a blast.



The building is a historic part of Rome and so much fun to venture around.



We had friends and family still visiting, so we met them all at Harvest Moon Cafe, one of our very favorite places to eat. The location of the hotel was great because we essentially hopped across the street to see them and say our goodbyes! We had so much fun reflecting on the previous day and got to hear all of the fun stories that we missed out on!



We spent the rest of the day laughing and talking, which we had started to miss during all of the wedding craziness. Overall, I would highly recommend waiting on a honeymoon because it gives us something very exciting to look forward to and we will definitely be able to enjoy it much more and won't be quite so exhausted.

New Beginnings

April 9, 2011 marks the best day of my life thus far. This day's date is so profound to me because it is the day I married my best friend. The day was filled with laughs, hugs, and a few tears. I want to remember how I felt on this day and every other day of the first year of our marriage forever. Due to a failed attempt at a previous blog and in lieu of becoming a duchess (thanks to my sweet sister-in-law for the nickname), I have promised myself and my new husband that I will make one posting each day of our first year of marriage so that in the future, we can look back and laugh at all the mistakes we made, the dinners we burned, and how much fun we had. Here are some of the pictures we have so far that we are absolutely in love with.



Our photographer was Katherine Birkbeck out of Knoxville, Tennessee and she was beyond amazing!



She made her rounds & captured everything, while continuing to be discreet.



She had so many creative ideas and even dug through my bag to ensure she captured images of all things important to me!



She even had time to catch all the little funnies we missed on our big day...



and...



and precious moments like these...





With these pictures in hand, we will surely be able to remember the warmth and love that our friends and family brought to us on this special day.

Katherine's website is: http://www.kbirkbeckphotography.com/