Our honeymoon is scheduled

We have finally scheduled our honeymoon to Turkey! We leave on March 23, returning home on April 6. We’ll be flying to Istanbul through Chicago, with a layover in Amsterdam on the way home. Our trip will take us to Istanbul, Cappadocia, Pamukkale, Ephesus, and Dydimus. We decided to bypass Trabzon due to the time of year (lots of snow in the mountains), and Gaziantep due to its proximity to the Syrian border. We plan on returning in spring to visit Trabzon at a future time. We’ll definitely share photos when we have them.

Photos are in!

We have the wedding photos…and are working on sharing them. 🙂 Patience will be rewarded!

Wedding Photo teasers…

Please see our “Wedding Photos” page under the Wedding information tab for some teaser photographs from our photographer. We’ve all been busy and haven’t had much of a chance until now. Sorry about the delay!

 

Enjoy!

 

Jen & Jeff

Married!

Jen and Jeff are officially married.

The wedding was beautiful and we were touched by how many people could make it.  If you weren’t there, we missed you.

Thank you again!

 

Expect post wedding updates and photos galore soon!

 

Jeff and Jen

Last minute details

We’re packing today for Chicago, and trying to handle all the little last minute things before we travel. What fun! We’re all so excited! 🙂

We leave for Chicago tomorrow night.

 

Photo Collage from the Bridal Shower

Here’s a montage of photos that one of Jeff’s family put together from the shower held over Mother’s Day weekend in Chicago. Thank you Donna Hinshaw – this was lovely!

Bridal Shower Montage

 

Reception Feast

We completed our final tastings for the cakes and the reception menu. All was a complete success, to say the least. 🙂

Wedding Cake – won’t contain chocolate, but will contain lots of other yumminess in a flavor combination that is sure to surprise the taste buds. Take the Cake just completed a custom design for us. We absolutely love the final sketch they sent us – this cake is going to be gorgeous and extremely tasty! 😀

Groom’s Cake – will contain the chocolate… the rest you’ll have to see when you get there. For those unable to make it, we’ll be sure to post photos! 🙂 This one is Jeff’s brain child.

Reception Menu – The game plan so far: 6 passed hors d’oeuvres with an action station for the cocktail hour followed by a lovely meal with soup and salad and the main entree, finished with dessert. There will be lots of great elements in this meal – Jen, Jeff, Marissa (wedding planner extraordinaire), Charlotte, and Jeff’s parents all participated in the tasting, and all unanimously approved the menu selections. The chef at The Blackstone (Eric) was fantastic, wonderfully polite, and he plates some gorgeous items. Beyond that, there needs to be some surprises for the evening!

 

*If you have any food concerns, please be sure to contact us.*

Crazy weekend of planning almost done

Well, our long weekend in Chicago is almost over – we made it to every appointment almost as scheduled! 🙂 Food has been finalized, cakes are finalized, make up trial was a success, my hair got cut and styles and is looking super cool, Char’s hair is looking wonderfully adorable – awesome bob, and the bridal shower was a complete success.

A giant thank you for Cathy Milam, Janet  and Alice Kramer for hosting this shower and making all the details happen. The shower was held at the lovely Cafe Pyrenees in Libertyville, IL. The appetizers and lunch were fantastic, and the desserts were perfect.  What a fantastic day!

We’re in the final month count down – more details to come, but we can’t share all the results from this week’s appointments! There will surely be a lot of surprises for everyone! 🙂

Food and Airplanes and Appointments, oh my!

So we missed our plane Thursday morning (along with several other people) because of security line length. We ended up catching a flight on another airline completely, but still made it perfectly on time to the cake tasting at 9:30am.

Cake tasting – AWESOME! We have our cake flavors. Because Jeff’s groom’s cake will be this chocolate confection, we opted for no chocolate in the wedding cake. There will be nutty flavors in the cake, though, as a warning.

Next Charlotte and I had our hair done – wow, we both love our new hair styles! Bob is awesome. You’ll see how fantastic he is when you see Charlotte’s and my hair on the big day.

Then we had the formal tasting at The Blackstone for the entire reception menu – action stations for the cocktail hour, passed appetizers, soups, salads, several entrees and more desserts for a sweets table – we spent almost 4 hours eating superb food. It was all fantastic, but we narrowed it down to our final choices for the menu. We can say with absolute confidence that no one will walk away hungry and everyone is going to love some part of this feast. I could go on, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise.

I had my make-up trial today – wow – Alicia Brooks did a great job. I’m extremely happy with the results! I also had my dress fitting today so we are well on our way to having all the major items done and checked off the list.

In usual fashion, we couldn’t have done any of this without Marissa or Jeff’s parents. I’m exhausted and am off to bed now. Thank heavens.

Jen

Final Round of Trials and Tastings!

We’re getting packed and ready to head out to Chicago this weekend for our final round of tastings, trials and fittings. How exciting!!

On our to-do list:

  1. Cake tasting for wedding cake,
  2. Main caterer for our reception menu tasting at The Blackstone,
  3. Final meeting w/ Bleeding Heart Bakery for the groom’s cake – this thing is going to be superb (in appearances and taste),
  4. Make-up Trial for Jen
  5. Hair trials for Jen
  6. Fittings for Jen and Charlotte
  7. Family photos at the Chicago Botanical Gardens on Mother’s Day
  8. Charlotte’s having her cut & styled
  9. I hear rumors about having our eyebrows shaped (this sounds uncomfortable)
  10. Get the marriage certificate (Jeff still really wants a ketubah – )
  11. Lazy time with the family is squeezed in there somewhere…
  12. Mother’s Day brunch with the moms in the family (Sharon, Jen and Alice) before the trip to the gardens
  13. and last but not least, a bridal shower for Jen – giant thank you to Janet Peterson and Cathy Milam for hosting this!

All in 4 busy days – with Marissa’s planning help, it all fits in there with some scheduled down time to boot! 😀 So we’re getting ready for a wonderful long weekend with the family and finalizing a lot of little details. More information will be posted here next week as we get things figured out.

 

Last call for food allergies! If you have one or more, make sure you send an email our way so we can plan accordingly!

 

Make sure to send your acceptances and regrets for any invitations we send your way. 🙂 You’re important to us and we look forward to hearing from you.

 

Jen & Jeff

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