May 2017 archive

Lucky to live so close to Disney World

Chillin’ at Disney World: A Husband and Wife Working Team Survival Guide

Years ago, like a TON of years ago, in the world before and just after having kids, my husband and I, who have worked together all these years, didn’t really have an outlet to let off steam. My company, Pegeen Flower Girl Dress company was busy all the time and with many deadlines.  At the time, he had his own company (and advertising and printing company) and he had his deadlines too.  We were always at odds with our schedules.  It wasn’t easy, and we missed each other a lot.  So, after 9/11, when the “air” in New Jersey was always a sad reminder for us we made a choice to located Pegeen down by Disney, as we called it “The Happy Place”.  We miss our friends terribly, and much to my son’s surprise (hahahaha) my family even more.  But the life style not to mention zero state income tax is just more conducive to a more relaxed atmosphere although it took me 10 years to get my husband to stop wearing a tie to like, oh, I don’t know, a restaurant.

Our go to relax thing was to go to either Disney or Universal for family or couple fun.  Kept Jim and I from pulling each other’s hair out. Then, 3 years ago, frustrated because our then 30 minute trip to Disney took us an hour from just downtown Winter Park because of work on Interstate 4, we moved the kids (now college) and dog to live within a mile of Disney and 5 from Universal.  I was in heaven.

My husband and I are really lucky. We are pretty crazy about the positive effects of Disney World on our psyche. We are lucky to be just a mile from the park via the back entrance and no, there is not a secret entrance, just an employee entrance.  Frequently I find that we are at odds with the hard work so my son will drop us off at the entrance gate at Disney on his way to work there. After 20 minutes, we are smiling again and content to people watch (really kid watch) and find ourselves talking about business,  Soon, whatever seemed difficult to solve is easier if you just whistle while you work. HAHAH. If you live here, we tend to forget the culture of living in the city of “The Happiest Place in the World”. So, moving so close to the park for us was a salvation. As business owners, we may work all the time, but its hard to not feel like you are on vacation everyday when you get to hear the Disney Train whistle every 15 minutes or so and see the fireworks every night in your driveway.
From the Pegeen Fairytale Collection, the Emerald Fairy. Pegeen Style 901
So chillin’ with some customers (above and below) is always fun.  When you come to Florida, we hope you visit us too!  Pegeen Style 901 Above and Pegeen Style 803 Below

Tinkerbelle Fairy

 

Pippa is Getting Married – What will Prince George and Princess Charlotte wear

Still on the style watch for this “Near-Royal” wedding.

On May 20th, Pippa Middleton and James Matthews are getting married. In attendance will be the future King of England, William and future Queen, Kate, sister of the bride.
So naturally, royal-watchers will be doing what watchers of the Royals do: Paying attention to every “royal” detail imaginable.

Like the last wedding, we at Pegeen will be up early Saturday morning checking out the selections for Prince George’s pageboy suit and Princess Charlotte’s flower girl dress. Not being a British apparel we would never get chosen although we are the children’s designs for many celebrities.  We can however wonder if we were chosen, what styles would the bride choose?  Check out The Regal Collection here.

Ring Bearer Style 509 “Prince George” below

Prince George Ringbearer Suit

Pegeen Ring Bearer Style 595  “King Louis” below

Page Boys Royal Suit from The Regal Collection

Pegeen Ring Bearer Style 590  “Prince Harry” below

Royal Page Boy Style 590 by Pegeen.com "Prince Harry"

Flower Girl Dress 698 “Princess Charlotte” below

Princess Charlotte

 

 

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Pegeen Announces Their Wedding of the Year ~ AGAIN

Yeah.  Murphy’s Law struck our household again.  After spending oh, I don’t know a hundred hours preparing our for our wedding of the year contest – THEN my hubby who has Type1 Diabetes and shakes ALL THE TIME was so tired he put a screwdriver into that electric plug thingy to take out the battery.  OOPS.  Then I decided NOT to listen to my dentist of a few years ago and cracked my tooth in half.  NO MORE CHEWING ICE. THEN, as my web designer and I were preparing to launch our new mobile ready website – disaster struck.  (Thank God for full, overwrite protected backups)  29 breath-holding hours, we restored the website BUT, alas, I forgot to protect WordPress.  Dumb.  SO, here is my best attempt to re-write a story about my son and his new bride.  Here it goes at my attempt to re-write my previous post (Yes Rob, I saved it in Word.)


When my son Billy was pretty small, 5th grade in fact, he and I were sitting at rehearsals for his dance show, and he announced to me in a deep sigh, “I so want to be married”.  My son, you see, was a romantic and liked having his ducks in a row.  So, while at Disney working  after graduating from business school, he met his fiancée Juanita there although while they worked there they didn’t date.  Then Billy moved to California (sigh) to set out to conquer the world but they stayed in touch.  A few months after living there, and many calls later, they started dating. At first it was long distance as she had now finished her college internship program with “The Mouse” and moved back to Reno while Billy was living in Modesto. Luckily, they were just a quick drive from one another over the Rockies.  A few short months later, Billy announced he was engaged, and while we were happy for him, I knew that the picket fence was what Billy had long searched for.  Plans were for a wedding 12 months later, but after months of planning a Nevada wedding, we got a call from Billy and Juanita because, quite honestly, my son couldn’t wait to get married.  Like I said, this is something he dreamt about since, oh, I don’t know, 5th grade.  So, with less than 6 weeks’ notice, we found ourselves flying to Denver for their wedding in their new home town.  We all will be celebrating as planned this summer on the original date, but even though it wasn’t as I would have planned, it was the most intimate, loving and special day for me, yep a mom in the wedding business for all of these years.

I DO know how Martha Stewart must have felt when her daughter Alexa decided to basically run off and get married.  My son Bill did not quite do that but we were surprised when my son and fiancé decided to move their wedding from August to March.  But you know what?  Even though there were just a dozen or so guests, they pulled it off and it was the most intimate, wonderful occasion where we, his brother, dad and I – along with Juanita’s mom and her closet friends – pulled off quite a number of surprises. Lucky for us, this beautiful woman, my new daughter-in-law has the same heart of gold as my son and relaxed style.

And, as Walt Disney himself would say, it all started with a mouse.It all started with a Mouse

Of course I would be a bad mother if I didn’t say “MY SONS WEDDING WAS THE BEST IN THE ENTIRE WORLD”, correct?  But actually, we named their wedding our favorite “Intimate Wedding of the Year.”  Gosh, we had so much fun though at first I wanted to kill him because I was worried about my youngest mid-terms 2 days later (Teddy only flew in for 12 years). After all, mom’s never stop worrying about grades, huh?  I can’t forget what a nice time we had in the hectic hours leading up to his wedding.

Originally I had planned creating new designs for the 500 flower girls I was hoping they would have, but those plans went out the window when they moved up the date. As a surprise to Juanita, her sister brought her niece and on Thursday they let us know they needed a flower girl dress. I threw the bride’s color scheme for a loop because I brought along, after some alterations, my favorite dress from our Fairytale Collection (and my favorite color) and hopped on a plane Friday morning.  Frozen Fairy Tale Flower Girl Dress by Pegeen.com

The morning of the wedding there were haircuts (thank you Teddy for cooperating after no sleep), a quick run to Men’s Warehouse for better coordinating shirts and Tiffany blue ties, dry cleaners and some package drop offs (yeah, even on vacation I am always working).  At 5pm, we gathered together at a beautiful venue in Denver.  His cousin, my niece and her now-fiance picked up 3-sizes of the most delicious cheesecake (thank you Cheesecake Factory in Boulder) topped with a newly purchased glass topper of Cinderella’s Castle that Jim and I picked up Thursday night at Disney for a surprise!  After the ceremony, the 20 or so guests gathered at a restaurant for the Wedding Reception.  Oh, I was even able to sing to Billy the song we practiced around his dancing and performing days, “My Best Beau” to the guests and yep, barely made it through, sobbing.  It was really touching for me that he joined in.

SO how could I not include one of my children’s wedding?

Intimate Wedding of the Year

I loved their first look photo as they both said a prayer with the pastor. intimate-wedding-021

These two are never serious, his brother Ted served as Bill’s best man.

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Nice socks, Teddy!intimate-wedding-026

Always a Disney Dream.

intimate-wedding-013

Eh… I did choose two other wonderful and beautiful weddings to be included in our yearly contest but for me, there was no other Wedding of the Year. I will be writing about them in our regular, Pegeen Flower Girl Dress Blog but this blog is really about Life, Love, Home and Work. And my crazy, loving family.