This past weekend, my whole family headed up to Chicago. My sister, mom and I headed up on Friday night after work and my brother-in-law and nephews came the day after. This was the weekend that my family met Jim's family for the first time. This was also the weekend that we got a lot checked off our wedding list.
Jim flew in late Friday night and headed to his mom and dad's house. On Saturday, Jim and his mom came to pick up my sister, mom and I to go to our cake tasting. We got to try our yummy cake and decide on a design. This is the fun part of the wedding planning for sure! I won't spoil the surprise and let you know what we got, but it is going to be delish! On the way up to the cake tasting our moms got acquainted. Once our cake tasting was over, we had time to kill and were right in the neighbourhood of where Jim's brother lives, so we had arranged to meet him and his fiance for a snack. We had a great time catching up with them, and they were able to meet Maggie and my mom.
Soon it was off to go to our food tasting at the hotel where we will be having the wedding reception. I didn't really know what to expect, but I wasn't prepared for how great this tasting was going to be. We got there and met the banquet manager, Jean. She brought us to the room where will be tasting the food. When we entered the room, there was a table fully set up with all the linens that will be at our wedding. Our first choice we had to make was what napkin design we wanted for the wedding. We had 5 choices. Again I won't spoil it for you, but they will be cute. We were introduced to our server for the tasting, Pedro who promptly offered us wine. I wasn't expecting a server at all! I just thought we would have a bunch of things on the table to eat and they would each give us a fork. It was so not the case. We had previously chosen two starters to try and Pedro brought all five of us out full samples of each starter. We ate them both and chose our favorite. We were pretty unanimous on our choice which was great! Next up was the salad course. Again, we had previously chosen two to try and they brought out full versions of each. We also got to choose 2 salad dressing (we had 4 to choose from). Jim doesn't like salad, so he sat this one out. When we told Jean that Jim didn't like salad she offered on the wedding day to bring him out a fruit plate at that course!
Next up was sorbet to cleanse our palates. It was a yummy refreshing treat.
Finally, our entrees we had previously chosen came out along with different starch options and vegetable options. They brought out full entrees for us to share. We made all of our decisions pretty quickly and unanimously. With 5 of us present this was a great thing! At the end of the tasting the chef came out to talk to us and see if we had any questions or concerns. It was amazing how much care the hotel took to make sure we will be happy on our wedding day!
We could not have had a better time. We had plenty of food, lots of wine and a great feel for how our wedding food will taste. We are so excited to try it again on our wedding day!
After the tasting, the florist we are working with met us right at the hotel. When it comes to flowers, I am not one to know a chrysanthemum from a gardenia. So this was a pretty easy appointment. I just told her what I liked, and brought some pictures and made sure we had all the flowers accounted for that we wanted on our wedding. She had done the flowers for Jim's sister's wedding and they looked so beautiful so I know that mine will look great on the wedding day too. It was so great that my mom, his mom and Maggie could share in the planning and see the banquet room where we will be getting married and share in some of the preparations of the wedding.
That night, my nephews and brother-in-law Dave arrived. Jim and I decided, after hanging out with my family for awhile, to go for a date night. We didn't have much alone time, so we took what we could get. It was nice to be able to just talk about how everything went that day and how excited we were that things were coming together!
The next day my whole family and Jim and his mom headed to church. This church is his mom's church and the church we will be getting married in. It was so nice for my family to be able to see where the wedding will happen. My little nephew Alex was feeling under the weather, but he managed to make it to mass. After mass, we all headed for brunch where we met Jim's sister and her husband, Jim's brother and his fiance and Jim's dad. It was VERY surreal for Jim and I to have our WHOLE families in the same room together! Everyone got along well and were able to get to know each other. It was great!
After brunch, some of us headed back to Jim's parents house. It was great for my family to see Jim's parents house and experience their wonderful hospitality. All in all it was a great weekend! It went by very quickly but it was awesome that our families got to meet!
Only 198 days til the wedding! :)
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