Heather's getting married!

Heather is getting married in THREE weeks!!!! Wow... it's almost here. It's been an incredible 2 year journey. I am honored to be the maid of honor and with that have had a wonderful time organizing her shower (back in May) and then last weekend our bachelorette soiree...
Heather is the star of the 4th picture down... her creativeness is going to result in one of the most incredible weddings. She has spent the last year organizing, brain-storming and spending countless hours in her "ladyland" doing what is known as DIY projects. From pom-poms on flip flops for the guests, to out of town gift bags, amazing packages for the wedding party, ribbon wands for the ceremony (in lieu of rice), felt bags to hold the wedding programs, plastic holders for the pictures that everyone can take part in with the photo booth, all the vintage elements that she's adding to round out a vintage themed wedding... the list goes on. A local photographer, Kristin Spencer who is doing HJT's wedding, created a blog last year called Chatty Brides for local women (it's gone national now) to post about planning weddings... to view a lot of the projects that Heather has done, visit the site. It's incredibly inspiring.
I wanted to organize a day with Heather's closest friends doing activities that she and I enjoy and also partook in when we lived in Newport together. We started the day at Greenvale Vineyards in Portsmouth, RI - down the road from where the wedding is going to be at Glen Manor. Greenvale is a small vineyard focused primarily on whites that grow well in NE along the coast. We had an amazing tour guide, Bill, whom took us through the vineyard pointing out the various grapes and the process of growing. That was followed by a tasting of the wines. Greenvale has jazz on Saturdays and encourages you to bring a picnic, or they have boxed lunches you can order ahead of time. I made a picnic for the 8 of us that included wonderful cheeses, salad, soup and cookies. We relaxed, had wonderful conversation with 8 incredible ladies, drank wine and laughed a lot. Thank you to my dear friend, Frances, who took these pictures. Fran has spent many hours this year working on her photography skills and it shows.
I haven't seen pictures of the rest of the day yet... I can only imagine! We took a ride out Ocean Drive for afternoon cocktails at Ocean Cliff - a spot that Heather and I often haunted! We had a hotel room in town so we went back there to spruce ourselves for an evening out... another favorite haunt was Cooke House right in the heart of Newport. We had a wonderful dinner followed by dancing in the Boom Boom room! Late night we visited a place we also spent a few hours at... Pelham.
All in all it was a successful, relaxing fun day in preparation for what will be a wonderful weekend for Heather and Ryan.