The Wedding!

My brother got married! Honestly there could be 27 more exclamation points after that sentence and it still wouldn't feel like enough. Lukas and Virginia tied the knot on December 30 on St. Simons Island, her hometown. It was beautiful. It was incredibly well-planned and executed (there was a 15-page master schedule that covered the week, broken into 15-minute increments... these people were serious). There was so much smiling and laughing and praying. And I am more than thrilled to call Virginia my new sister.

The dawning of the Big Day.

We wrapped up Christmas in Peachtree City and booked it for St. Simons on Thursday morning, followed closely by Matt's parents, who were also invited to the wedding and would be acting as our stand-by babysitters (having both Matt and I in the wedding was going to make it difficult to wrangle our little flower girls so I was thrilled to have the grandparents along!) It monsooned on us basically the entire way to the island. We rolled in just in time to check into the hotel, change, and head to the rehearsal, or what I called the "listening and following directions" time. Given the circumstances, the girls did an awesome job. Violet asked me to run through her instructions over and over as we were in the church, making sure she knew exactly what to do the next day. Typical Annie just ran around and charmed everyone. We were given lovely gifts of matching black hoodies with our monograms on them - adorable! The girls loved them immediately - their first monograms! We headed to the rehearsal dinner and listened to stories from the bridal couple's nearest and dearest. Annie was escorted home by grandma and grandpa while Violet made fast friends with the other flower girl and hammed it up in the photo booth.

Look at these beautiful girls! (Every time I want to chop off Annie's hair, I see a picture like this and be still my soul and scissors...)

Quick, while she's actually looking at the camera!

The wedding kiddos!

Love it when Stephanie makes it out from CA!

The next day, after a quick run on the beach (with strict instructions NOT to go into the water!), the ladies of the wedding party arrived at the Belt residence for hair, makeup, hoodies, pictures, the works. This was the start of the hurry up and wait portion of the events. I was worried about my kiddos... waiting is not always the easiest. But they entertained themselves well. For what could have been a stressful time, everyone was remarkably calm. Videographers roamed around, the photographers flitted in and out, everyone just did what they needed to do, I attempted to be helpful and stay out of everyone's way.

Virginia and her girls!

Getting her hair done like a big girl!

Annie, continuing her trend of not looking at the camera.

The countdown to making Aunt Virginia our real AUNT Virginia!

Finally it was time to board the trolley (Violet made me google a picture so she could understand exactly what a "trolley" was) to take us to the St. Simons lighthouse, scene of the wedding reception and pre-wedding pictures. Overnight the temperature had dropped 20 degrees, meaning we were looking at outdoor photos by the ocean in low-50 degree weather. But the sun was shining and we were counting on adrenaline and love to keep us warm!