Archive of ‘Billy’s Wedding’ category

Family Wedding Update

We were fortunate enough to finally celebrate with our son and his new wife in Lake Tahoe for a delayed reception. It was really nice because it took off the pressure for them to have a huge wedding especially since they were only 24 when the married in March of this year. Even nicer for us was that it was held in a small town called Kings Beach, right at the north end of Lake Tahoe.. and it had been on our bucket list for years. Since it had been the first vacation we were able to take in many years (except for family reunions) we were really looking forward to some well-deserved time off.  I will brag a bit too – Bill’s wedding was months earlier and their niece wore really one of my favorite dresses from my Pegeen Fairytale Collection of flower girl dresses, The Opal Fairy, our version of Elsa’s dress from Frozen.  I was so proud to see the dress in “action”.

We loved how Bill and Juanita were going to be able to get formal portraits done the night before the Celebration Reception by a photographer friend, happy that they were able to get professional shots done that I could put my newly acquired scrapbook skills to use. I think they came out beautiful so for anyone who is waiting for a trip, I recommend going to Kings Beach, Lake Tahoe. Before I forget however, a few funny stories, but I will be brief. First, when you capture the last flight into Reno and are lucky to get to the car rentals in time before they (yawn) close at 1230 pm, get a hotel in Reno. DON’T think that you can just wing it, finding a place between Reno and Kings Beach. You can’t. Boy these people go to sleep early.

dancing bears

So – we drove to Tahoe, and it was about 4am our time and when we arrived we drove around briefly looking for a place to grab a bite. Wasn’t happening (the town was fast asleep) but we found a sort-of 7-Eleven (maybe it was, I was exhausted) where I remarked to my youngest and to my husband, “look at that beautiful carving of that HUGE bear.” Only it wasn’t a carving, it MOVED and this big bear was hungry but the attendant there simply and calmly closed the door until the bear moved on. Later that morning, now 5am our time, we found the grocery store (it was filled with a wonderful selection of California wines) and the clerk said – “Oh, that’s Bob the Bear. He’s just looking for some watermelon and treats”. Anyhow, after several drive-bys to see what Bob the Bear was up to in this quaint little town, we decided that napping on the beach (we couldn’t open the lock box for some reason) was out due to the presence of Bob the Bear.  Instead, we decided to go to sleep in the driveway of the rental in, as my son called it, “the van by the river”. Spreading our our luggage and sweaters on the van’s floor (because we couldn’t believe it would ACTUALLY get down to 40 degrees, we didn’t bring coats) we nearly froze our Floridian skins in our overnight stay.   Honestly, I can’t remember what fresh pine air was anymore so it was lovely. End of stories. Anyhow – we had a great weekend and thank you, Billy and Juanita, and to their mom for your hospitality and to the lovely town of King’s Beach, Lake Tahoe.

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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.

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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.

 

Its Official: I am now a Mother-In-Law

This past week, one of my customers called me because she had her bridal shower and EEEK – she complained about her soon-to-be Mother-In-Law.  So, with my incredible sense of wisdom that comes with this business (LOL), I told her how when I was first married, my mother-in-law was such a strange thing to me. I didn’t really know how to handle her.  She was an awesome person and in fact, I knew her for years though my husband and I only dated for 5 months before getting married, but yet, being on the “inside” of their family traditions was very different indeed. It took a bit of getting used to her ways and finding that learning those traditions they held dear to them were likely pretty important to my new husband as well.  Looking back on it however, I find she was a great role model for making my new memories with my new daughter-in-law.  Sadly, we live almost 2000 miles from my son so our interactions are less frequent but I remember so many of the things Marion would do to include me in decisions.

But this new bride to be was really struggling, and crying as her shower ended up being a hot mess with the MIL really giving her a hard time about EVERYTHING.  So, I put on my newly acquired “hat” of a MIL and gave her the best advice I could give her:  Someday, she won’t be there and chances are, you will wish everyday she was.  Most importantly, I told her that it will take a bit of time to get into the groove of a relationship and know what makes her laugh, and their family traditions and so forth, but most importantly, to get along with her because after all, pleasing her will ultimately make your husband happy.  I also cautioned her however that leading up to the wedding will be hard for her because (and knowing this from experiencing the same myself) she will be losing her son.  It even goes deeper than that as well – especially when a baby is in the picture – because as sexist as this is going to sound, it’s you that usually goes to your mom about things such as where pots and pans go in the cabinet (beside the stove) and not the sink (because that’s what he thinks).  So, there won’t be the interfering as much with some of the traditional (and non-traditional) roles that you and your husband will have but experiencing what makes for good bonding is to use her as a way to learn more about your husband and family traditions as those will become important as you start your family of your own.

My mother-in-law sadly got ill while we were in our 40’s and for me, that was hard seeing my husband go through such a profound sense of loss, one which I would experience the following decade when my mother passed.  But I often think of the kindness she showed me those first few years of marriage as I try to relate to my new “daughter” which Marion was so good at making me feel like one of her own.  She showed me a deep sense of patience and kindness and acceptance although I am sure there were times she rolled her eyes about me.  So, with her wisdom, I chart a course for my future relationship and hope with patience, I develop that same with mine.with-my-mother-in-law

 

You know how your kids surprise you all the time?

Well, this guy, my oldest son gives his dad and I a call a couple of weeks ago. Asked us to not say anything until he was finished and proceeded to tell us that both he and his fiancee moved up their wedding date.  I mean BIG TIME.  To like this month!!  SO, what’s a mother to do?  Smile and say, “it’s fine”.  (Well a little pleading on my part.  I tried to make the point that his younger brother will be in the middle of mid-terms at UPenn, and with school for him, that wasn’t good news.  SO, my youngest will go to Denver for only 12 hours.  Better than not coming).

I suppose that it’s easier for them to get the wedding out of the way and heck, I’m always up for a party.  Then in August, we will have the reception in Reno.  Will be nice visiting my old Alma Mater (Denver University).  Stay tuned!!

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Now that it’s the new year, I have to get going on my MOG responsibilities….

I suppose it hasn’t really hit me until just recently that my son is getting married.  It still seems strangely odd that I am actually going to go through all the motions of preparing for his big day with his lovely Juanita.  Throughout the past 5 months I have been saying “after the New Year” and remember my previous post about being the Great Procrastinator, well it is true.  I always wrap my head around something and then I am all over it.  SO I think the all-over response just clicked in.  I have been thinking about the rehearsal party that I would like to have in Lake Tahoe because it’s on many of my sibling’s bucket list to visit, and the planning responsibilities that will entail as it will be long distance.  My goal is to make this a special water day of sorts so I have been weighing the idea of boat rentals and a beach picnic of some kind SO for any of you that know what is called Inverness Village, HELP.

Rehearsal Party Invites

I also managed to find musicians for the ceremony (which is being held in Reno NV) because my family is very musical.  My son was like, ” I want some guitar or something new age”, but this is something, actually the only thing I won’t budge on, in honor of my parents that brought music into our lives.  It’s funny, when I was married some 30+ years ago, my husband came from a family of printers and while I was picking out the most beautiful invitations, my Mother-In-Law-to-be said she would only accept us using engraved invitations and honestly, I understand now.  SO for my parents, I found a wonderful string quartet. Although I am staying out of most of the wedding planning because I am just the MOG, at least I have input to the music which, if the Hyland’s know anything, it’s music.  My brother will sing “Our Father” as a tribute to my mom, a wonderful lyrical soprano who trained not only at USC but with some of the best vocal teachers in and around New York.  It is going to kill us siblings, but for us, a wedding or funeral isn’t the same unless we hear it.  And for my father, who was such a fantastic influence in all of our musical backgrounds,  I have already corresponded with and can’t wait to hear TheStringBeings.com.  For the rest of preparations, it’s okay if I don’t get a say…. after all, this is something that Juanita and her mom have dreamed about her whole life I am sure.  What is nice however is that she is a wonderful daughter-in-law to be and Jim and I couldn’t imagine better.

For the rest, well, as I start to work on the children’s wear sketches for the wedding, I will bring my ideas to them on paper.  I also said there was no limit to the number of kids in or around the wedding (cousin dressing and so forth) but I just need to know the colors.  ANYHOW – I am working on some ideas and surprises for them both.  In the meantime….

I thought this a great idea for my son’s wedding. We still haven’t designed the flower girl dresses or suits for the wedding, but they are going to be SUPER special, but I thought that we may use this idea for my nieces, should we coax the little darlings into making their first flower girl appearance.
Flower girl wagon

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