family wedding

Travel: Denver Recap – Part 3

| The Bee Life

The true reason for our long weekend trip to Denver was to celebrate B’s cousin’s wedding! The bride, Lauren is from the Denver area, and they recently moved there within the last 2-years, so most of B’s family had to travel in for the nuptials.

Wedding festivities kicked off with a welcome reception hosted at Tivoli Brewing Co. the outdoor patio space was the perfect spot for a warm night with gorgeous views of the city. This was the first time we got to see a lot of B’s family since arriving Thursday morning.  So it was good to see everyone and start celebrating Lauren and Jensen. The food and beverages were flowing and we easily helped shut the night down, being literally the last two to leave. *smiles*

Saturday, July 9 – the big day was finally here! We were taken to the ceremony location by commercial buses from the main hotel.  The setting for the ceremony was a beautiful, Grecian Parthenon found surrounded by trees in a park in the center of the urban setting, in Cheesman Park. It was a toasty afternoon and the sun was shining bright by the time the ceremony was supposed to start. The setting was beautiful and the decor elements were simple yet made a statement. Their officiant was a close family friend, which made the ceremony personal and unique to Lauren and Jensen’s relationship.  They also shared their own vows, with a blubbering groom. You could see how happy they both were.

The reception was at a venue called Mile High Station. It was an old warehouse/depot like place that was refurbished with a modern industrial feel. The introduction of the parents, bridal party, and newlyweds was a unique one – allowing the guests to get a birds-eye view of everything from the happy hour space above the main reception area. Dinner was family style BBQ, mac n’ cheese, beans, salad, and portabella mushrooms. Desserts were mini cheesecakes, a salted caramel brownie and an original strawberry flavor and a doughnut wall I resisted! Pretty soon the dancing commenced! B was showing off his dance moves, apparently his family hasn’t seen him dance much! Luckily he danced the night away with me!!

Lauren was a beautiful bride, there was so much love not only between Lauren and Jensen but all of their friends and family that supported and were involved in their special day. This was our last wedding of 2016 and it sure was a good one, it was a reminder that our planning is going to start kicking up soon, and it’ll be B and I on our big day before we know it! (crazy!!)

 

Weekend Recap – Family Wedding

| The Bee Life

This past weekend was full of family as we celebrated my cousin Tim’s wedding to his long time girlfriend, Morgan! So here is a quick recap of the weekends events.

Friday, we both took a half day in hopes that we could head out mid-afternoon and get down to Columbus early evening… but I had a little too much on my to-do list before that happened. Running around making stops, getting an oil change in, and then forgetting about our call with a wedding planner that I was expecting to have while we were already in the car, pushed back our leave time by about 2-hours, oops! We dropped Moz over to our neighbors, and then finally hit the road and got into Columbus a little after 7pm.

Dinner reservations were at 8:30pm, whenever my family has a weekend of any sort together (especially weddings) it is ALWAYS jammed packed with family dinners, activities, workouts, you name it. So we headed to Bravo! Cucina Italian – my first time there, andddd I know it’s a chain, but I wasn’t impressed at all. Service was slow and the food wasn’t that great. Which only led me to snack on Doritos later in the evening. *smiles* After dinner was over, some people went to the casino and others headed back to the hotel.  We stopped and grabbed some adult beverages to hang out at the hotel with my parents, Nate and Kiera.

Saturday morning we slept in until 9:30!! We haven’t slept in, in so long, it was so amazing! We got up and headed to Starbucks and then came back to workout and hang with the family. The hotel had a basketball court so everyone was hanging out between there and the pool while I sweated through a 45-minute boot camp workout, luckily my cousin Niki joined halfway through! From there we headed to lunch at First Watch, yum! (Avocado toast for days, please and thanks.) By the time we got back after lunch it wasn’t long before we had to start getting ready for the wedding.

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The ceremony; was so nice and the vows were beyond sweet. Tim and Morgan have been together for nearly 11-years, not to mention living long distance, so this has been a long time coming. My cousin Tim is a bit more reserved than the rest of us, so it was so awesome seeing him pull out his handmade scroll with his vows and reading them with so much love and truth in what he was saying.  After they said their vows, and kissed the rest of the night was about celebrating!

Tim & his adorable Mom
Morgan coming down the aisle
The kiss!
The send off – big smiles.

The reception was at La Scala Restaurant, which had a back room for the reception area and was the perfect size to accommodate everyone. The staff was great catering to everyone and we had our own private bar in the back which worked out perfectly too! Although it took some tweaking for the mixed drinks, since I’d like to say my family is a bunch of alcohol snobs, it would’ve been easier if we could just get behind the bar, ha! The dinner was served family style, which I really liked. It was a mix of lasagna, two types of chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes, with salad and bread as the starter. Yum!

Forever Wedding Date ❤
Our Table!
Kiera & Nate
Their cake!
Most of the Fruit Loops!

Once the dancing finally started, the rest of the night was toast (unless a country song came on, then the dance floor was nearly cleared out, yet the DJ still insisted on playing his set-list).  Everyone tore up the dance floor and definitely got a second workout in. I think B danced the most out of all the weddings we’ve been too together, it was so much fun! Of course, there were a few breaks for shots – although we had to order them in the main restaurant, so it was funny to see the bartender mix up 25-lemon drops and a rowdy crowd come into the main area demanding shots.

B and Tim
The First Dance
Jordan and I cutting a rug
Me and Niki
Hampel Ladies
With the beautiful bride
Final Dance!

It was a great time,  and family drama was at a fair minimum, minus a few situations which I am currently ignoring for the time being. *smiles* You could tell how happy Tim and Morgan were and how excited they were for their big day and commitment to each other. They’re truly just a sweet couple. It’s always a great party when we are welcoming another person into our family, needless to say everyone was hurting the next day.

We had a family brunch Sunday morning so everyone could see each other one last time before we all went our separate ways, a family tradition for wedding weekends. B and I were back home by 12:30 and got our little pune baby back (Moz). She was exhausted from her weekend with her friend Maybel! We were exhausted too, so it was a lazy afternoon.

Cheers to another beautiful wedding and fun weekend!