1st Wedding Weekend, Part One

Our trip to Raleigh was fairly uneventful...which is good! The only slight hitch was when we arrived at the car rental counter and were told we didn't have a reservation. We didn't have the confirmation number (note to self...get the conf. # for the next rental), but they were able to rent us a car. And they threw in a free GPS for the weekend, which was nice.

On Thursday, we hung out with my brother, his fiance, my niece, and some of their friends. Thursday night was Leslie's bachelorette party, which I attended. Despite a few awkward moments (of the "this is my brother you're all talking about" variety), I had a really good time with the girls. Shawn spent that evening hanging out with my brother, a groomsman of his, and my niece. It was wild and crazy, I'm sure. :)

On Friday, we followed Brent and Leslie to the beach! We actually went straight there without even checking in to the hotel. Have I mentioned my slight fear of the ocean? Yeah...I get super nervous in natural bodies of water when the water is murky enough that I can't see my feet. If I don't know what may be swimming around me, I tend to freak out. So that being said...I was very proud of myself for actually getting in the ocean! Shawn and I swam around a little bit, and we took on some waves for awhile. After jumping in the waves (and getting knocked over a few times), we found my niece playing in the sand. She took one look at me and said, "What happened to your hair? It's crazy!" :)

Friday night was the rehearsal at the beach and the rehearsal dinner. It was a pretty typical rehearsal, except for the fact that my job was to get the flower girl (my niece) down the aisle at the rehearsal and she did NOT want to do it! There was quite the meltdown that evening. I think it was mainly because it was HOT outside (upper 90s and humid) and she was surrounded by a bunch of people she really didn't know. Things were definitely looking up at the rehearsal dinner, though, when Uncle Shawn gave her one of those glow sticks (the kind you shake and then "crack" to make them start glowing a really bright green light).
I'm not sure why we didn't take more pictures on Friday...those two were the best two from the rehearsal dinner. Shawn got better ones at the actually wedding...I'll make a separate post tomorrow about the rest of our weekend and post a few wedding pictures.