This past Saturday my best friend, Susan, got married! She had been together with her now husband for almost 10 years. I still remember when she first told me they started dating back in high school. They make such a good couple. Anyway, being such a special occasion I made sure to take LOTS of pictures.
The festivities started on Friday with the rehearsal and wedding prep. They met at camp, which happens to be near Chris' parent's house in Andover. I have never been to this part of Jersey before and when I was driving through looking for Chris' house I felt like I was in Ohio - nothing but barns, cows, horses and corn fields (or fields of some sort). Granted there are places in Central Jersey where you can see cows and the like, but the area was definitely less suburban and more country. It was a good mile or half mile between most houses. Which did not help when I got lost on one road that just went on forever. My GPS told me I had reached my destination at the wrong house number, so I drove back and forth a couple times (after some bad directions from a woman whose driveway I stopped in). I must have passed this red barn about 3 or 4 times...although there were probably half a dozen of these red barns so you never know...
After I finally arrived at Chris', which by the way is 10 acres of amazingness...we waited for everyone else to arrive, had some lunch, and then headed off to our first pre-wedding activity -
manicures and pedicures!! I had never actually gone to get a manicure/pedicure before, but now I can kind of understand why girls like it so much. To start off with, you get seated in this comfy electric massage chair while your feet dangle into one of those foot water massage baths (with the little jet streams), while one of the ladies trims your nails and cuticles, scrubs the dead skin from the bottoms of your feet, slaps some sea salt lotion on your legs and massages your leg from the knee down, including your feet. Now, I'm not one who normally likes having my feet
touched, and I know some of you might be grossed out (especially by the dead skin part), but aside from the occassional tickle it was quite nice. Look at these chairs and tell me it doesn't look comfy.
(From closest to farthest: Liz, Susie, Mollie, and Cheryl - can't really see her, but she's there...)
And to top it off, after your feet get rinsed off they put lotion on the bottom of your feet, place them in a plastic bag (which I assume was for sanitation purposes) and then put warm booties on your feet! Which also probably sounds weird, but again oh so comfy.
There was an arm massage that went along with the manicure as well, but my hands were out of commission for that so no pictures. I got my first French manicure though. Unfortunately, with all the work we've been doing on the house they didn't really last very long.
And here we are scoping out the location outside.
After the rehearsal we went back to Chris' for dinner. And then it was back to camp for the evening. Since this was the same camp where the bride and groom met they thought it would be nice to have the wedding party there the night before the wedding. Luckily for the girls we got to stay in the "lodge", which during actual camp is reserved for the camp leaders. While the guys got to stay in one of the "cabins", which was not as well furnished...Here are some pictures to give you an idea...
The lodge for the girls was a big building with 5 rooms and 5.5 baths (one for each room and a communal half bath). Each room had 2 bunk beds.
And there was a communal living area, complete with a little kitchen and electric fireplace.
And this is the cabin where the guys stayed...
Yea, that was pretty much it - 2 bunk beds in 1 room, with only a single light bulb in the middle of the ceiling. Where is the bathroom you may ask. It wasn't so much a bathroom as a bath house - a separate cabin with men's and women's facilities. All I have to say is that I'm glad I didn't make Phil go with me for the night stay at the camp. I don't think I would have heard the end of it...Then we spent a couple hours before bed making smores in the campfire.
The festivities started on Friday with the rehearsal and wedding prep. They met at camp, which happens to be near Chris' parent's house in Andover. I have never been to this part of Jersey before and when I was driving through looking for Chris' house I felt like I was in Ohio - nothing but barns, cows, horses and corn fields (or fields of some sort). Granted there are places in Central Jersey where you can see cows and the like, but the area was definitely less suburban and more country. It was a good mile or half mile between most houses. Which did not help when I got lost on one road that just went on forever. My GPS told me I had reached my destination at the wrong house number, so I drove back and forth a couple times (after some bad directions from a woman whose driveway I stopped in). I must have passed this red barn about 3 or 4 times...although there were probably half a dozen of these red barns so you never know...
After I finally arrived at Chris', which by the way is 10 acres of amazingness...we waited for everyone else to arrive, had some lunch, and then headed off to our first pre-wedding activity -manicures and pedicures!! I had never actually gone to get a manicure/pedicure before, but now I can kind of understand why girls like it so much. To start off with, you get seated in this comfy electric massage chair while your feet dangle into one of those foot water massage baths (with the little jet streams), while one of the ladies trims your nails and cuticles, scrubs the dead skin from the bottoms of your feet, slaps some sea salt lotion on your legs and massages your leg from the knee down, including your feet. Now, I'm not one who normally likes having my feet
touched, and I know some of you might be grossed out (especially by the dead skin part), but aside from the occassional tickle it was quite nice. Look at these chairs and tell me it doesn't look comfy.
(From closest to farthest: Liz, Susie, Mollie, and Cheryl - can't really see her, but she's there...)
And to top it off, after your feet get rinsed off they put lotion on the bottom of your feet, place them in a plastic bag (which I assume was for sanitation purposes) and then put warm booties on your feet! Which also probably sounds weird, but again oh so comfy.
There was an arm massage that went along with the manicure as well, but my hands were out of commission for that so no pictures. I got my first French manicure though. Unfortunately, with all the work we've been doing on the house they didn't really last very long.**
After all of us girls returned from our manicures/pedicures we headed over to the camp where the ceremony would be held and had our rehearsal. It wasn't looking too good on Friday with all the rain, so we scoped out the rain site and the outdoor site.This was the rain site, which luckily we didn't end up using. You can see Chris' brother grabbing pictures of the witness signing.
And here we are scoping out the location outside.
After the rehearsal we went back to Chris' for dinner. And then it was back to camp for the evening. Since this was the same camp where the bride and groom met they thought it would be nice to have the wedding party there the night before the wedding. Luckily for the girls we got to stay in the "lodge", which during actual camp is reserved for the camp leaders. While the guys got to stay in one of the "cabins", which was not as well furnished...Here are some pictures to give you an idea...
The lodge for the girls was a big building with 5 rooms and 5.5 baths (one for each room and a communal half bath). Each room had 2 bunk beds.
And there was a communal living area, complete with a little kitchen and electric fireplace.
And this is the cabin where the guys stayed...
Yea, that was pretty much it - 2 bunk beds in 1 room, with only a single light bulb in the middle of the ceiling. Where is the bathroom you may ask. It wasn't so much a bathroom as a bath house - a separate cabin with men's and women's facilities. All I have to say is that I'm glad I didn't make Phil go with me for the night stay at the camp. I don't think I would have heard the end of it...Then we spent a couple hours before bed making smores in the campfire.
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