A Glorious Affair

I’m back! I have a super long recap of the GORGEOUS wedding and this morning but first off let me say to the Madison girls that I am so sorry I wasn’t able to meet this morning! I emailed you guys but family stuff came up and it was just too crazy and busy for me to sneak away. I thought I would have time and I would have loved to but I needed to spend some time with my grandparents before we headed back to Milwaukee. I really wish I could have gotten the chance to run outside though–what a gorgeous day! Instead, I had to resort to waking up at a very, very early hour and hitting the hotel treadmill for a 3-miler. Meh.

Anyways, I’m going to start from the beginning yesterday because I have so many awesome pictures and the eats were SO good!!! I think I left off yesterday after we ate brunch. The wedding was scheduled for 1:30 outside in this beautiful garden on University of Wisconsin campus. My cousin, Matt, is in the process of getting his PhD from the college. He’s actually working on finding a cure for malaria—how crazy and interesting is that?! Its sort of a genius to say the least.

Here are my parents and I before the ceremony in the hotel lobby (I love this picture of us!):

And father daughter shot because I matched his pink tie

I was worried it might rain but it was actually really nice and not too hot at all. There was a breeze and we were under a tent surrounded by tons of gorgeous flowers and veggie plants! Here are some pictures from the ceremony:

Katie’s dress was antique lace and was absolutely breathtaking! The veil she is wearing is my aunt’s (her now mother-in-law) and my aunt is passing it down to me as well when I get married!

After the ceremony we had a photo-shoot of sorts while the wedding party took a million shots all over the garden.

And then Ryan made me walk with him to go see Camp Randall, the football stadium. It was actually quite a hike and we were super dressed up so it was a little weird but he was excited.

And I had fun because I found one of those milk thistle thingys the size of my HEAD!

My dad picked us up on the side of the road and since we had two hours to kill till the reception, we went and sat outside and got a beer!

I had a blue moon with an orange slice but LOVED Ryan’s spotted cow that was served with a lemon slice!!!!! Wondering if I can find these in Florida? Definitely my taste in beers….light with no bitterness and served with fruit!

I only drank half because this was HUGE!

We also got bruschetta since brunch was a long time ago and we needed a snack before cocktail hour!

The bruchetta was aaaaaamazing! I had one bread slice and tons of tomato topping. The bread was grilled and it was just so good.

Speaking of good food—the appetizers during the cocktail hour of the reception were probably the best wedding reception appetizers that I’ve ever had! Check out this phenomenal spread!!!

I LOVE European style tapas and my favorites include fancy cheese, proscuitto, olives and crusty bread. Ryan and I loaded up this plate to share full of everything!

I had a small glass of red wine, then a small cosmo while all this happening. The cosmo was pretty tiny but awesome!

Around 5:30 we all moved downstairs for dinner. We started with a beautiful salad with light dressing:

And I had pre-ordered the seared salmon. Guests had a choice of chicken, seared salmon or fiet. The salmon was actually out of this world!

I feel like a lot of times wedding food really isn’t awesome because kitchens are mass-producing meals for a crowd. However, this was awesome and was cooked to perfection—I thoroughly enjoyed every last bite!

Saving room for wedding cake, obviously…..

Katie and Matt had different flavored layers of their cake—they had a red velvet layer, a poppy-seed layer (which was the best I think) and a white cake layer. The red velvet layer had chocolate ganache in between, the poppy-seed had almond filling and the vanilla cake had raspberry filling. Ryan got red velvet, my aunt got poppy-seed and I got vanilla. I had a bite of each (and ate all of mine)! It was very, very, very yummy!!! Worth every darn bite, especially the fondant icing!

Here’s Ryan’s red velvet–

With dinner, I had another glass of wine. Oh, how I love weddings!

After we ate we headed back upstairs for dancing! Ryan and I snuck out though to go watch the fireworks outside on the roof level of the hotel.

And then we were huge dorks and went to bed at like 9:30 because poor Ryan had to wake up at 4:30 to catch his early flight back to Tampa!! Of course I didn’t wake up at 4:30 with him but I did wake up soon after to get a 3 mile run on the treadmill in because plans had changed and I had family time all morning. I wish I could do a reader meet-up everywhere I go because I want to meet you ALL! However its just tough when you are with, like 50 extended members of your family

Before my run I had the other half of granola bar from yesterday morning and afterwards I spent time with my grandparents before they headed out and went out to breakfast. I had a cup of Moroccan Mint tea and an egg white veggie scramble with whole wheat toast—-

The egg white scramble was awesome and only made with a bit of cheese and tons of veggies. I ordered it to be made “spicy” and then totally doused with Sriracha (aka heaven on earth) and inhaled every last bit. I was STARVING!!

And that pretty much sums it all up! I’m currently packing up and waiting for my parents to get ready so we can head over to Matt & Katie’s apartment for a wedding present opening brunch. After that I have a super long day of travel as we head out of Madison back to Milwaukee then fly through Atlanta to get home to Tampa around 10:30 tonight. I’m trying to figure out though where exactly this Trader Joe’s is in Madison because I convinced my parents that if we have time, we MUST stop!!!!

I’ll be blogging from Hot-Lanta! See you in a bit!

Tagged as: Breakfast, cardio, cocktails, dessert, Dinner, Exercise, musings, Snack, Travel