Showered.

I was so blessed with the most beautiful bridal tea on Saturday. My mom, sister, and sister-in-law outdid themselves with planning, crafting, and cooking. Mom had seven teapots with different kinds of tea in each one...assorted cake plates with homemade tea sandwiches...a caprese salad with tomatoes from her garden...a fluffy white coconut cake baked by my stepdad's elderly mother...what seemed like 900 cookies (804 of them eaten by me) baked by two of my cousins...Liz brought chicken salad, ambrosia, pomegranate limeade, and stuff I'm probably forgetting...Mom and Nanny used the excuse to pull out their fina china sets...paper napkins in four different floral prints...Shelby hung streamers and hand-washed all the tea cups and saucers before the party. Liz stayed up for many late nights making favors--handmade tea bags with a note and pink stickers that said "Laura & Chris" on the back and "The Perfect Blend" on the front. She enlisted Chris to write a funny quiz ahead of time that all the guests had to try to answer. Erika, who couldn't be there, spent weeks culling recipes and stories from all my friends and relatives, and decorated every page of a scrapbook for me to put the stories in! Catherine drove three hours from Pennsylvania and her mom drove five hours from North Carolina. I was a ball of happy tears the whole day.

I felt impossibly lavished, but you know what I loved best about it--it was all homemade and handcrafted. It was in my mom's living room and the people who were there were all either family and new family or old friends/old family friends. It wasn't putting on a show. I just felt so loved and special, and I'll never forget it.

There were many lovely things about the whole weekend, in fact. We got in to Liz's house late on Thursday night and stayed up late talking about girly things like makeup and manicures, much to Chris's disgust, I'm sure. On Friday we headed to Virginia and got our marriage license! That night we all drove two hours to the tiny town of Orkney Springs, where they are somehow able to wangle world-class musicians every summer. We saw Bela Fleck and Toumani Diabate, and it was an incredible concert. On Saturday Shelby and I visited the hospital to see our cousin and her new baby, born August 7 and weighing in at 9 lbs 7 oz (!). I tried on my newly-fitted dress with my shoes and my updo. Oh, and I found a stack of Domino magazines for 50 cents each at the antiques mall. Score.

I'll write more about the weekend later, but I just wanted to share what a beautiful bridal shower I was given and how grateful I am to have so much love around me.