My Brother is Married!

We went to New Orleans this past weekend to attend my brother's wedding. He is actually my older brother - 31 - and really caught us off guard with this whole getting married thing. He met Kristin in July when he moved to Shreveport and they started dating in October maybe. They started talking about getting married in early November and got engaged the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I do love my new sister in law. She is really sweet and fun. I told her mom she was my hero for being able to pull off a beautiful wedding in 3 weeks! Lance & Kristin wanted something different than the traditional church wedding, so they decided to have a small wedding at a hotel in New Orleans with mostly family attending.

Nathan and I took the girls and drove most of the day Friday to our friend's house in Baton Rouge. They let us stay the night and we got to meet their adorable little girl also. The next morning we got to New Orleans and walked around for a little while. It was amazing weather, probably almost 80 degrees! We had a little rehearsal dinner that evening and then rehearsal. I also got to see a lot of family who were in town for the wedding. My grandparents and aunt & uncle from Birmingham were there, and some aunts & cousins from Lake Charles. They got to meet Avery & Alexis and help out with them a lot since Nathan and I were both in the wedding.

Kaleigh got to be a flower girl and she was so excited about it. Of course being a 3 year old, the only thing you can predict is that they will be unpredictable! We had the rehearsal Friday night and there was this white paper "carpet" laid out in the aisle. Nathan told Kaleigh to stop running up & down it b/c it was starting to tear. Of course she didn't obey. It turned out not to be the one they were using and we didn't think any more about it. Kaleigh was so cute during practice, meticulously pulling out one petal at a time and taking her sweet time, so we worked on getting a handful of petals and sprinkling them around. Well, the next day during the wedding she came out and started to walk down the aisle. She still seemed to be going pretty slow and some people were starting to laugh, but I couldn't see what she was doing. Kristin's sister next to me who is taller whispered to me "she won't walk on the paper". Kaleigh was sweetly obeying Nathan from the day before, trying to walk in the small space between the paper and the chairs. If she dropped a petal on the white, she even picked it up and moved it to the carpet! When she FINALLY got about 3/4ths of the way, we told her to come here, and she tried to give the basket first to Lance, then to my dad, who was officiating at this point. I finally got it from her and sent her to sit with my mom. She was so good during the rest of the ceremony. I hope to get a video one day and post it. Cute, cute. Well, she'll get another go at it in May.