A Soggy Wedding Weekend

This weekend was Joel's cousin Abbey's wedding at the family farm on Weiss Lake. We headed up to Mentone on Thursday night. It's only 30 minutes away from the lake and my parent's were going to keep the kids for the rehearsal dinner Friday night, so we just decided to go up early and do something fun on Friday with my parents. We ended up going to the Children's Museum in Chattanooga. It was great! The boys LOVED it. It was the perfect size and very age appropriate for the boys. I liked it so much more than McWane. We spent a while there and then had a great lunch in downtown before having to make a stop by the mall to get Hudson some pants for the wedding. Who knew that it was going to be freezing in May (much less pouring rain--more on that in a minute!). 

 

 We were "on stage" dancing for Hudson (yes, I know we look ridiculous!)...

 Puppet show!

There was a whole doctor's office that Hudson could have stayed in forever. He was the doctor and Big Mama was the patient.

Friday night was the rehearsal dinner at the Chattokee Lodge, which is a hunting lodge near the lake. This is where Joel's entire family congregates for Thanksgiving every year. It is really super nice! Joel was not feeling all the great, but I made him take a picture with me! A rare date night if you will.

So, Saturday arrived and we all kept looking at the radar and we were all convinced the rain would be out of there by 2 pm or so. We kept hearing that Tuscaloosa and Birmingham were sunny, but it was raining buckets in east Alabama! It was quite a disaster. Joel and his brothers and dad (and the rest of the extended family!) spent the entire day trying to get water out from under the tent. They dug trenches to divert the water away from the tent and put sandbags around the tent to hold the water out. And then there was another group with cups that were pouring out water, and some were using the shop vac to suck the water up. It was awful...oh and it was STILL raining buckets. All of that effort did work though. While there were muddy areas, it was a lot better than it could have been! The guys were just covered in mud. After the wedding, I think they had to pull about 10 cars out of the mud so they could leave. It was such a muddy mess! Plan B was to go down to the methodist church in town, but Abbey wasn't having it. She was bound and determined to get married at the lake! So that she did! And it was still beautiful! The rain finally stopped as they pulled out of the driveway after it was all over! After 9 pm! Oh well...

 

Gail made a early morning run to Wal-mart and bought all of the polka dotted rain boots they had for the bridesmaids. I thought they looked so cute. They also carried these adorable pink and white umbrellas. They definitely made the best of the situation!

 

Everyone waited in the tent until it was go time and then we all went out in front of the house with our umbrellas and watched. While this was not what they had imagined the wedding day looking like, it was still really pretty! I'm not going to lie though...it was kind of miserable in the rain and it was COLD too! They made it quick though and Abbey looked SO pretty! And she was so calm too...

I had to throw the original boys' outfits out the window and even made a mid-day dash to Wal-mart as well to buy the boys some rain boots. Camo was all they had, but it was better than ruined church shoes. They pretty much looked like a mess all night, but oh well!

My boys loved the band again. We couldn't get them off the dance floor. As you can see below, the dance floor was soaking wet too and the boys both did the splits multiple times. I was so worried that one of them was going to hurt themselves, but they just got back up and went on!

 They wore themselves out!

We had a really fun night despite the awful weather. Everyone just went with it! We went and put the boys in bed around 8 and then headed back to the wedding. That was nice to have a little while by ourselves. The bride and groom's exit was really fun. They are expecting a baby in September and they decided they would do a gender reveal as their departure. They had confetti that was pink or blue and so when it was go time, we all shook our little sticks and the confetti came shooting out. It was BLUE! Another boy in the family! We are excited for them. It will be the first boy for their little immediate family so that is good for them!

We have work this week and then we are doing the wedding thing all over again next weekend! Phew! These weddings are going to wear me out, but they have all been so much fun. Next weekend should be interesting though as we are all in it. We will see how that goes! :) Can't wait!