Wedding Fun!

Since I am, apparently, really terrible at keeping up with this blog lately, I've decided to dispense with my promised "Pre-Wedding Festivities (and crafts)" post and skip right to the wedding stuff- sort of.

Aaron and I got to Manassas just over a week before the wedding, so we had lots of time to help getting everything ready for the wedding.  We made 2 kinds of paper garlands, assembled the favors, and went to the temple with Natalie when she went for the first time.

Natalie had her actual wedding at the Washington DC LDS Temple and a family dinner at my parents' house on Friday.  At the wedding, Aaron and I sat with Doug and Austin (and Cassie and Mariko, of course) and my sweet mother cried as she looked at all four of her "babies" all grown up and married.  It was a beautiful ceremony and I'm so excited for my little sister!

That night at the family dinner, we ate food (obviously!) and Chris's friend, Chris, and I gave toasts to the bride and groom.  While they were changing into their going away outfits, a bunch of us sneaked out to the front of the house to decorate the car.  (Side note- we needed the keys to the car and no one had a spare, so we asked the parents to figure out a way to get Chris's keys without letting him know why we needed them.  So Chris's mom just asked for the keys.  And he handed them over.  Not even a little bit suspicious.  Silly boy...)  I think we did a pretty good job.  Of course we filled the car with balloons and covered it in streamers, but among other things, we also gave them each a sparkly hat, some Martinelli bottles, baby bracelets, and instead of noisy cans on the back of the car, we used wind socks.  It was pretty sweet.  Unfortunately, the photos were not on my camera, so I can't show off our great work.

The next day, several of us headed out to the reception site at Prince William Forest Park to start setting everything up.  We put up the garlands that Aaron and I made, moved tables around, and got everything ready for the reception.  We even had a photobooth where people could come pose and I took pictures, which got put up online later so that people could see their fun photos.  When the Longs (ah!) got there, they were super impressed with our decorating- it was very much in Natalie's style and I hope she really loved it, since we made a big effort to make it how she wanted it.  And Denise Beatty wasn't only the photographer, but she came and helped with the decorating too!

The bride and her "bridesmaids"

The favors

The reception hall

So congrats to Chris and Natalie Long!  I know I'm a few weeks late in writing about it, but I hope you are happy together!  Isn't being married the best?