Who: Ballet Pensacola
What: Celebration of Dance
When: March 8, 2007
Where: Pensacola Cultural Center

Who: Michelle & Andy
What: Wedding Day
When: March 3, 2007
Where: Private beachhouse at Navarre Beach, Florida

Meticulous, I think, would be the word I might use to best describe Michelle when it came to planning her sweet beach wedding. This lady thought of everything - and what’s more - she MADE most of it herself! She had the most adorable invites, programs, petal cones, baskets… the list goes on and on - and all in my favorite chocolate brown color scheme! I could make an entire post just devoted to all the details, but then I wouldn’t be doing this wedding justice, because beyond all the ‘pretty pretty’ stuff is a really awesome couple and beautiful wedding. This is a day where we just “felt” every moment along with them - on the drive home Charles and I talked about the moments throughout the day that really ‘got us’… look at the photos… you’ll see what I mean.

Charles was on the front porch with Andy:

And I was on the back porch with Michelle:

And we were all there when Michelle & Andy saw each other all dressed up for the first time that day:

I love her twirling to show off the dress!

Petals covered the ground for the sunset ceremony:

Michelle walked down the aisle with her father to the sounds of a bagpiper:

I love this look from the proud papa:

They did it!

First moment alone as newlyweds - and they thought no one was watching

So I had heard about Betty Weber cakes for - well, forever - but I had never actually tried a piece for myself… until this wedding. (Hey, it’s a tough job but someone had to do it!) AMAZING. Seriously the best cake I have ever ever ever had. Yes, it really was that good. I’m suddenly trying to come up with reasons to order a cake for myself - LOL. Totally worth looking into - Betty Weber cakes in Pensacola, Florida - and they’re beautiful to boot!

Catering by Big Sexy Food. < --- yup, they live up to the name!

Flowers by… uh oh… I forgot. I’ll email Michelle and find out! They were so pretty - I want to make sure to give proper credit.

Thank you guys for letting us be there for so many awesome moments. We are really fortunate to be in this business together and to find inspiration in your relationships…

Someone asked me last week at a wedding what my favorite part of the wedding day was and I paused for a minute and really thought about it - I have so many favorites, really. I love the whole ‘getting ready’ time with all of the anticipation leading up to the ceremony. I love the ceremony - well - for obvious reasons. (This is where I most often get a little weepy.) “formals” with the newlyweds following the ceremony are so great - because you really do glow right then. And the reception is always awesome between the toasts, parent dances (also usually a tearjerker for me), and watching (some of) you transform into dancing fools is pretty great too…

So, with so many awesome moments - what did I choose?

I told her my favorite part of a wedding day is at the end of the night, when Charles and I climb into our car and start heading home. She laughed and said “yeah, I bet after such a long day you’re just glad to be done!” But that’s not what I meant at all. My favorite part of the wedding day is when we get to make the sometimes long commute back home and relive the moments of the day together - to hold hands and be sappy even and talk about things that touched us or made us think. Charles might be a little shy about me sharing that and being such a sap, but it’s late here and that’s what is going through my head after a long weekend…

I know I say it a lot - maybe too much to sound sincere through a written diary like this, but I’m going to keep on saying it: thank you for sharing your lives with us. This is one of the most fulfilling jobs I could imagine for us and for our marriage - and we are truly blessed for the lessons we are learning from all of you.

xoxo,

Meg

I was finishing my Office Depot order for toner cartridges the other day, and there is was: Digital Camera…$10.95! What a deal! I so could not pass that up. I just had to see for myself what $10.95 would buy you! It is absolutely hilarious to see the images that it creates because they are so bad!!!

Now — the back story here is that we just cleaned out our back bedroom, and turned it into a dedicated treadmill room. We bought some of those insanely large balls that you use for exercise. I don’t even know what they are called! But we had to hang curtains back there too.

Meg really wanted to share this with everyone…I think she just wants you to know how crafty she is! So here are the two curtains that we hung. Can you guess which one I tied?

This camera really packs a punch huh?
~ Charles

I read a lot of books. Books on marketing, customer relationships, networking…just trying to keep it fresh. Any book you grab these days that talks about marketing is going to mention some variation of a statistic relating to the thousands of advertisements that we see every day, or the number of impressions required for us to absorb & act on a particular marketing message. The bottom line is that we as consumers in this society are absolutely overrun with advertisements.

So it takes something just this side of extraordinary to get me to really say “wow”. And this may not be as cool to you, but I thought it was freakin’ genius!

Here is an email we got from one of our favorite vendors this past week:
see the email

Clever in its own right. But then you get to the website. I actually laughed!!! I laughed…I watched the video of the cypress playing tennis. And I voted.

So right now, I am inviting ALL of you to rush to www.VoteForTrees.com and help us finish the race to 5,000. I won’t give away the surprise, but there is a cool little package that might just arrive at your door after you vote (on a non-paper material)…so vote today!

And just so we can show our support for trees, leave a comment here on the blog if you had time to vote! Go trees!

~ Charles

Who: Melissa & Adam
What: Wedding Day
When: February 24, 2007
Where: Lightner Museum & Courtyard for the ceremony
AND Casa Monica Hotel in St Augustine, FL for the reception

I was going to type up a whole long thing about how awesome this wedding was (which it totally was) and how great these two are (seriously cool) and talk about how pretty everything was (quite pretty) and all the attention to detail, etc… but then I just got this email from Melissa - she must’ve known I was thinking about them because as I was typing earlier I could hear the little “new mail” ding from my other computer and I saw this…

Meg and Charles,

Words cannot begin to describe how amazingly beautiful our wedding pictures turned out! From the second I saw your website I knew that I had to have you for my wedding. I wouldn’t settle for anything less and I am so glad that I didn’t! During the planning process everyone would ask me if I was getting excited and to be honest, all I could say was that I was looking forward to the pictures! You and Charles did not disappoint and actually exceeded our expectations! After looking on your blog for so long and seeing all of the other brides, I kept thinking to myself that our photos wouldn’t turn out as wonderful as theirs. I never thought of myself as photogenic, but the pictures you took proved otherwise. Adam and I were ecstatic when the pictures came in and after hours of staring at them over and over it finally hit us; you’re worth every penny and more!

We just really wanted you both to know how much we truly appreciate you capturing the greatest day of our lives in the most beautiful way imaginable! We can’t say it enough, thank you! You have a gift and we’re so glad that you were able to share it with us!

Melissa & Adam

So thank you guys - so much - for your kind words. We were so thankful to have been included in your day and can only hope that we were able to capture a fraction of your love for each other!

I’m all sappy now, so I’m going to let the photos do the talking for this one as I go and share their sweet email with my husband:

p.s. Melissa & Adam - WELCOME to the blog!