Only a week after returning from Missouri we found ourselves traveling out of town again, this time to Princeton, Illinois to see my cousin Meridith get married. Princeton is a small town along I-80 about 60 miles east of the Quad Cities. Meridith's dad and my dad are brothers and they grew up in Moline.
All of the wedding guests were invited to the rehearsal dinner which was held at City County Park just outside of town. Since the bride and groom are both avid baseball fans supporting opposing teams (Meridith grew up a Cubs fan while Evan is forever loyal to the Twins), and since Evan proposed to Meridith at a Cub's game at Wrigley Field by hiding her ring in a bag of Cracker Jacks and encouraging her to find the "prize", the dinner was appropriately themed for their love of the game. We had hot dogs, peanuts and root beer at the Grooms Concessions, played baseball on the park's field, and watched as the bridesmaids took on the groomsmen in a game that closed out the evening.
We were also each given an "Official Wedding Hanky" (made to look like the Homer Hanky) with their names printed on it. I thought that was clever! After the wedding ceremony, instead of throwing birdseed or blowing bubbles everyone waved their wedding hankies as the bride and groom left the church.
There was some time to kill between the ceremony and reception and Dad thought it would be a great time to show us all the work he has done on Uncle Todd's house in the past year or so. The house looks amazing! There's still a lot of work to be done, but it's a very old house with lots of victorian details to it so trying to preserve that history while fixing it up a bit is a challenge.
Probably the only thing I appreciated about high school gym class was learning swing dance moves. Though incredibly awkward at the time for a shy girl like me, it comes in handy now especially at wedding receptions. My brother Tim and I waited all night for the right song to come on so when the DJ announced that a few swing songs were coming up we wasted no time getting ourselves on the dance floor. We can really only remember one move from that gym class (now more than 10 years ago for me!), and although it's a really cool move, we probably over-did that one but it's so much fun to just be whipped around the floor and show off a little bit!
Despite the signature Illinois weather (hot, muggy and buggy), the forecast's thunderstorms skirted around us making it a beautiful day. We were so happy to have made the trip and celebrate with Meridith and Evan!