Kerry and Jeremy

Back in May I had my bridal portraits taken at Epping Forest Yacht Club in Jacksonville, FL. It was an opportunity for me to try out a new hairstyle, makeup, and practice putting the dress on. It did feel kind of weird putting the dress on and not getting married in it yet.

As we made it around the back side of the mansion by the water, the wind blew my hair straight and kept yanking my veil. So the trial hairstyle looked okay at first and then by the end it looked like I put my head outside a car window going 90 miles an hour. Definitely not cute! All in all, it was a great photo shoot and I felt more at ease that come wedding day I already had individual pictures done and could relax.

The most annoying part of the whole shoot, was that after I changed back into my normal clothes…I realized there were a ton of gnats trapped in the tulle in my dress! EEKK! So I had to pick all of them out so by the wedding day I didn’t have dead bugs falling out of my dress down the isle. hahaha! I posted some pictures below of the shoot:

P.S. I made the bouquet by myself! Dozen roses from Publix for $12.99, flower tape, and one of those pearl slip-on bands from Michaels!

Jeremy and I had the most amazing, relaxing, and stress-free honeymoon. There was no running to catch our flight to another country, going to cruise ship dinners, ridiculous excursions that were already setup, etc. We spent our honeymoon, (as I’ve already mentioned) in Northern Michigan with no plans, no reservations, just doing whatever we wanted. I’m going to post pictures in installments because we did take a lot (which I’m so happy about!)

So rewind back to us getting on the plane from Orlando, FL to Grand Rapids, MI on July 23rd. I upgraded us to first class seats, because actually with Airtran you get 2 checked bags each, free drinks, etc…and with all of our bags that we were bringing up for the second reception, I just convinced myself it was worth it!

First Class Baby!

Wedding Rings!

We took full advantage of the unlimited open bar/mini boozes! I realized during this whole trip that using the “It’s Our Honeymoon” card really had it’s advantages. We drank whiskey & coke the whole plane ride there, and when they started to get low, the flight attendant gave us a whole stash and sadly told the other passengers that there wasn’t any whiskey left….SCORE! (We did end up running out of coke, so we were drinking the whiskey straight and chasing it with Sour Patch Kids!)

Whiskey & Coke

While we were flying over Jacksonville, we could actually see our apartment in downtown Jax! So we took a picture! And if you’re wondering why we flew out of Orlando instead of Jacksonville…it’s because Jacksonville flights were $200 a person more expensive. So for the price of just one Jacksonville plane ticket we got 2 Orlando flights that were direct!!!

Downtown Jacksonville

We got our use out of Jeremy’s wedding gift on the plane! I got him an IPad for his wedding gift, which he was shocked about. I had him convinced that you aren’t supposed to get each other anything expensive for a gift, it should be a token gift such as cufflinks. haha! I love to spoil him! So we watched Amadeus, sipped whiskey & cokes, and relaxed before the big Michigan Reception started the next day.

Rock me Amadeus

Once we landed, we all headed out to San Chez for dinner. (which is one of our favorite places to eat in downtown Grand Rapids) It was such a nice relaxing dinner, and having my mother, father, and sister there also meant so much! The joining of two families really is such a beautiful thing!

***Stay tuned because I’m posting all of the Michigan Wedding Reception pictures next!!

Hi everyone! I’ve finally uploaded all of our pictures from all of the wedding events. Sadly I only have pictures from the Rehearsal Dinner and Honeymoon from our cameras. So I’ll start with the Rehearsal Dinner first! We both took off work on Friday and spent the day picking up family from the airport, printing and assembling programs, looking at flowers, etc. I felt so rushed, but as soon as we all arrived at the church for the rehearsal, I got the “OMG this is happening tomorrow!” feeling.

We had our ceremony rehearsal on July 16 at St. Catherine’s with the whole bridal party and Father Boddie. I can’t tell you how overwhelmed I felt after we left the rehearsal. There were so many things to remember and it felt like everything was going super fast! I probably stayed up until about 1am the night before just going through the ceremony schedule in my head so I didn’t forget anything. (Thankfully everything worked out beautifully the next day!)

Anyways, onto the Rehearsal…we had our Rehearsal Dinner at Blue Fish which is a fabulous restaurant located in Avondale. I had a groom’s cake made for Jeremy at the dinner which consisted of Lemon Cake with Raspberry Cream Cheese Filling decorated with an FSU spear!! It was delicious! The chocolate football on top was amazing too! Jeremy setup his camera on a tripod at the dinner so everyone could have their picture taken, which worked out perfect! We posted pictures below so take a look!

Yep, that’s right! Jeremy and I are finally husband and wife!! Thank you to all of our family and friends that shared in our special day(s). The ceremony was beautiful, the FL Reception was outstanding, the MI Reception was amazing, and the honeymoon was much needed! We still can’t believe how fast the last year and a half of planning for the wedding went by.

We have sooooo many pictures from the past few weeks, so bear with us as we finish unpacking from the honeymoon and upload them all. For a sneak peek from our wedding photographers, click here -> FL Wedding Sneak Peek!!!

Check back soon as we continue to update with more pictures, and more updates from us as we enjoy our newlywed life! :0)

Yes, in just 30 minutes it will only be 3 days until our big day! Tomorrow we will be receiving our first out of towners!!!……Jeremy’s parents, sister Kelly, and Grandmother. The best part is that they are renting out an apartment in our apartment complex so they will be only a few floors from us!

I wanted the house to look spotless when everyone got here, that I found myself ironing the sheets, bedskirt, and pillows, spot cleaning the carpet, doing 5 loads of laundry, and cooking more Key Lime Fudge then I probably needed to make. Although we didn’t make it to the gym tonight, we got sooo much done around the house!

Now that we have almost finished up all wedding related tasks and cleaned the whole house, I think we can finally relax. (let the nervousness/excitement of the wedding kick in) We are so excited to be surrounded by our family and friends! Cheers!

The end of last month, I met up with my bridesmaids and close friends in Chicago for a fabulous Bachelorette Party Weekend. We started off trip by attending the Taste of Chicago. There were sooo many booths with amazing food from all over Chicago. Among the best were, Potato & Cheese Pierogies, Lime Chicken Tacos, Pad Thai, Garrett’s Popcorn, and many more I can’t remember. Oh yes, and the vodka lemonades and wine tents treated us good as well! We were able to catch Salt N Pepa in concert at the Taste of Chicago later in the day and they were amazing of course. Check out their performance below…we were way in the back, but they were still awesome!

Saturday, we met up with Jan Tucker at Oak Street Beachstro right on the beach. Such a nice spot and you really feel like you aren’t even in downtown Chicago. We did a lot of shopping (more like window shopping), and stopped at the Hershey’s store for a quick treat. I have to admit, I really wanted to jump in line with all the kids and push all the buttons, levers, and turn wheels on this huge candy machine to get my bucket of candy, but I resisted and instead cheered them on.

Later that night we had a fabulous dinner at Cafe Iberico. We ordered marinated mushrooms, baked goat cheese dip, manchego cheese, mussels, shrimp, paella, etc. There was soo much food, but it was all soo good!!!! And the prices really weren’t bad at all either. Such a fun place to eat…I love tapas restaurants because of the little samples you can get of everything.

After dinner, we went to a few bars/clubs to dance and drink (although after eating all that amazing Spanish cuisine, I don’t think anyone wanted one). We ran into sooo many other bachelorette parties out and about. Also, we saw a bunch of brides & grooms at the bars as well. I definitely would not be wearing my expensive wedding dress into a dingy bar….but that’s just my opinion.

On Sunday we all left to go back to the “real world”, but Chicago treated us well! Can’t wait to visit Chicago again. I LOVE that city!!!! Thank you to Howard, Lorrie, Becca, Erin, and Nadine who came out to celebrate with me! Love you all! Check out the pictures below from the weekend!

Sorry for the delay, but I finally got around to uploading the pictures from the Florida Bridal Shower. We had such a good time, and my mom and sister really put together a wonderful bridal shower. I’m so glad that my family and friends were able to make it. Among the plethora of food….I thoroughly enjoyed the cake balls Erin made and the homemade “ghetto” Sangria too

We opened gifts, drank, ate, talked, and fortunately TLC was having a marathon of the show Bridezilla on so we were all delighted to watch it! Those girls are just soo crazy!!! Also, thank you to Mr. Czubko for sending down the engagement poster he made. It looked awesome outside the house! I added some photos below of the shower…I had to omit a few because after a few drinks I pulled out the wedding dress to show everyone, so I want to keep it a secret of what it looks like to everyone else! Enjoy!!

I wanted to share this little nerdy bit about me, because I thought it was pretty funny. For the past year and a half we have been engaged, while I was at work, I would occasionally write a piece of code really quick that would tell me how many months, days, hours, minutes, etc were left until the wedding. I didn’t really need to use this piece of code anymore because there are only 8 Days Left!!! (and I can count that on my fingers now) I tend to think of real life things in code (If-Else, Do-While, Try-Catch statements) and it wasn’t until today that I realized it. Here’s some of the code:

DECLARE @DaysLeft float
DECLARE @WeeksLeft float

SET @DaysLeft = DATEDIFF(day, GETDATE(), ’07/17/2010′)
SET @WeeksLeft = @DaysLeft/7

PRINT @DaysLeft
PRINT @WeeksLeft

This past Friday morning, Jeremy and I got our marriage license! Although I had a moment where I couldn’t find my Social Security card, thankfully they accepted my W2 form with my SSN on it instead. Crisis averted! Anyways, we went to the downtown Jacksonville courthouse (which only happens to be a few blocks from our place), filled out the forms, read the booklet, raised our right hand and stated we were not related (haha), and now have our marriage license! We couldn’t be more excited, so I took a few pictures to document it!

It’s almost here! I want to thank everyone who is sent their RSVP back in the mail to me already, I greatly appreciate it!! Chances are that if you marked off that you were coming to the Florida Reception, I have or will be getting into contact with you shortly about your dinner entrée. No matter what choice you make, I guarantee you will not be disappointed!

Jeremy and I had the opportunity to taste all of our choices for dinner at the Florida Reception a few months ago and we were very impressed! When we arrived, we were thinking it would be a small taste of the entrée, and maybe the appetizers if we were lucky. When we arrived, we were presented with all of the appetizers we had chosen, and FULL portions of the 3 entrées!! And yes, we ate EVERYTHING! I think that was the most delicious and largest lunch I have ever had! We definitely gorged ourselves that day, but hey…it’s for the wedding!

Below are some pictures that we took of the food we tasted. We are going to be serving everything below, except for the Chicken Cordon Bleu appetizers (I wasn’t too thrilled) and the Red Snapper with crawfish (that too I wasn’t too thrilled about). Enjoy the pictures below…they will definitely make your mouth water!!