Matt & Robin Tie the Knot

Has it really been a month and a half since my last post?  Good grief.  And now I have all of our trip to Florida to post.  Hm.  The wedding first, I think.

The whole trip was planned around Matt and Robin's wedding (and since we were going down anyway, there was no reason not to make it a full-blown visit).  Matt is someone that Brandon and I have both known  since forever, though they didn't get to be good friends until after high school.  We met Robin through Matt, and in the year or two since then, I've gotten to be friends with her, as well.  I even got to help her plan the wedding and make her jewelry, which I love.  Anyway, there was never any question about us going down for the wedding, especially since Brandon and Elora were both in the wedding party.

We drove down on February 28, a Thursday, and Brandon went over to Tampa (home base for all things wedding) that evening.  On Friday, they all got up and went paint-balling for the bachelor party, which I think is pretty cool.  They had to stop after only a few hours and take an extended break because John fell and dislocated his shoulder, and had to head to the ER to have it put black in place.  

Before and after.  Can you guess which is John?

I can't say that I precisely approved of all the bruises he ended up with, but they had fun.  Matt was in much worse shape.  At the end of their game, he had the dubious pleasure of playing open target to all of his groomsmen, and came away from the experience looking rather like a leopard.

Brandon's bruises were just as nasty, but he didn't have nearly as many of them.  Silly boys.

Anyway, I left the girls with Papa and Gigi and drove over to Tampa on Saturday, along with Kaitlin, the long-time girlfriend of another of the groomsmen.  We left Titusville around noon, but didn't end up making it to Tampa until about 5 o'clock.  We stopped for a late lunch, got caught in traffic on I-4, and then got stuck in the Plant City Strawberry Festival traffic when we tried to reroute.  We had a good time with it, and acquired a huge case of strawberries too.

When we got to the house we were all staying at, Sam was the only one around.  Carrie was at work, Tony was asleep, and the guys had all gone fishing.  Sam was busy putting together the flower arrangements for the wedding.

She and Robin had bought the burlap back in the fall, the last time that we'd all been in Florida, and had made the burlap flowers in the intervening time.  (If you're interested in how she did that, I'll soon be posting all about it on the craft blog.)  Paired as they were with the real flowers that they'd chosen, they looked incredible.  

I'm totally not surprised.  Sam did the flowers for her wedding as well, and they were nothing short of stunning.   This time, she did only the floral arrangements for the ceremony and the reception, while Robin made the ladies' bouquets.

The wedding took place on a converted farm in Lakeland, complete with a large loft for the use of the bride, a smaller room below for the guys, a reception hall with kitchen, and a gazebo with a seating area beyond for the ceremony.  It was perfect for an outdoor ceremony--except that it was unseasonably cold that day.  At it warmest, it only got up to about 58, and it was breezy and often overcast.  Everyone but Robin wore sweaters and jackets.

Staria and Jimmy brought the girls over to the house the morning of the wedding, then stayed there to get ready while I took the girls to the farm to get ready there.  Elora was the ring bearer princess.  She loved everything about it--the dress, the boots, the bit about being a princess--right up until the time for her to actually do it.  I'd forgotten, as I often do, that she doesn't like big groups of people that she doesn't know, and unfortunately, while she knew most of the guys in the wedding party, she didn't know any of the ladies.  She was shy and clingy that day, and had to be coaxed through all of it.  It took the threat of giving her job to Kaylie to even get her into the dress.  Carrie was a huge help in getting her ready.  It was talk of the baby in Carrie's tummy that finally got her to relax.

Kaylie was perfectly happy--so long as I was holding her.  Otherwise, she was every bit as fractious as her sister, and less easily diverted.  I finally had to call Brandon up to the loft where the ladies were getting ready to take her, just so I could finish Elora's hair, and get myself ready.  Even then, the bridal party had already gone to line up for the ceremony before I'd had a chance to put on my dress.  I got down there just as the procession began.  By that time, Staria and Jimmy had arrived, and Kaylie was with her Gigi, happily munching on a cake pop pilfered from the reception.

Poor Elora was still feeling overwhelmed and rather bewildered.  Rather than following several paces behind Ainsley, the flower girl, as she was supposed to, Elora simply walked beside her.  They stopped together at the beginning of the aisle, where Ainsley just stood in place and flung the flowers in front of her by the handful.  Everyone was telling her to keep going, to drop the petals as she went, but she stayed put until Matt came to get them, and Elora stayed with her.

  .Robin made her entrance with her father in a horse-drawn carriage, which drove in a circle all the way around us before stopping at the beginning of the aisle.  

She looked so lovely, and so incredibly happy!  

And of course her jewelry was awesome.  :)

The ceremony itself was beautiful.

Unfortunately, Kaylie decided to pitch another fit about halfway through, and I wasn't able to get any more pictures, but I think this one captures it pretty well.  :)  Actually, I didn't take many more pictures at all that day.  I stayed pretty busy, even after Staria and Jimmy left to take the girls back to Titusville.  I did get this one of the serving staff, who were almost comically glum:

And this one, of the guys all chatting outside toward the end of the reception:

Do guys "chat"?  Whatever.  That's enough for one post, I think.  :)