The Courtney Chronicles: A wedding worth remembering

Now that John and I have agreed to take turns blogging (mostly I had to agree, he is way better at this than I am), I figured it was time to update you on our lives! I wanted to start with our wedding. Which was a complete DIY project including food, decorations, and plans. Although there were some hiccups and the people we hired to cook the food we prepared didn't do it quite like we had planned, we were VERY happy with the end result. I always dreamed of getting married outside, and John, being catholic, wanted to get married in a church, so we compromised and got married in the church and had our reception outdoors. We had the festivities in our favorite small town McCloud, CA. If you have never been there we highly suggest you visit and stay at the Mercantile Hotel. Anyway, we had a (semi)short ceremony filled with laughter and tears (mostly laughter from John and I...oops). Then we headed to the Courtney Family Cabin for the reception. John and I spent months planning how to decorate and our wonderful families made it all come to life the morning of our special day. We were amazed at how great everything looked! And even more amazed that despite an 80% chance of rain on our wedding day, we made it though the whole thing without a single drop! Our theme was rugged simplicity. We decorated the tables with (free) pine cones that my sister and I had gathered the week before (thanks Jess!) and red roses. There was raffia and white lights, glass containers holding candies and goodies, cheese cake in lieu of wedding cake, and good ol' fashion hot dogs and hamburgers. Thanks to our dear friend and photographer, Melody Shirazi we ended up with some great pics! Here are just a few of the highlights!