Wedding Wednesday: So much catching up to do!

So, I pretty much accomplished all the tasks that needed to get done in Chicago. It was a non-stop trip but can I just go ahead and tell you that my wedding is going to be freaking awesome? We met with a lot of vendors who just get me. I wish we were having this shindig tomorrow!

 Oh, and the Jimmy Choo wedding collection didn't fit my feet, which was a horrible discovery.

And, in other news, while I was home in Chicago, we celebrated a wedding too. My cousin Cole (who is a writer for the Hard of Dixie, married his longtime girlfriend Brianna).

In horrible blogger fashion, I didn't take any pictures of the actual ceremony or reception - mainly because I was too busy sweating buckets on the dance floor.

But, thankfully, my social media addicted sisters did take quite a few for me to share.

 

On a really sad note, this was our first family wedding where someone very special to us wasn't here. If you've been reading for a while you know that I lost my Aunt Peggy back in March. Her daughter and son are in this picture below, and it was an especially hard night on them.

Aunt Peggy loved weddings, never got off the dance floor, and would have loved to be at Cole's.

She also, and painfully ironicly, loved the song "I Will Survive". It was her song. She used to dance to it when she was pregnant with my cousin Gia, and for the first few years of Gia's life, she'd cry hysterically whenever we played it.

 So, after the first dance, the DJ invited the entire Marino family to dance to the song in her honor. It was cathartic for my family (of 45) and boy was it a cry session (we are not shy Italians), but I promise you, we did her good.

Life keeps moving on.

 It's been almost six months since she left us, but never, ever, ever is there a day that goes by without us thinking about her. We lost a huge, huge part of our lives and this weekend, while meant to be celebratory, was also a reminder of that.