Post Wedding Activities

It's been almost 2 months since the last post...which is much longer than planned, but it has been crazy busy weekend after crazy busy weekend. After our wedding, we decided to head to Kohler for a night to celebrate after postponing our honeymoon; Dan had is 31st birthday; we attended Erin's 10 year high school reunion in La Crosse; Genevieve Gabriella Maio made her debut; followed by Oktoberfest in La Crosse; followed by Dan's cousin Earl and Sarah's wedding, followed by friends Kevin (one of our ushers) and Kate's wedding, followed by our first free weekend to put away our wedding gifts and write thank you cards at last! To be followed by our honeymoon (finally!) for which we leave on Friday morning. We are off to Riviera Maya for a week of sun. And now that it's cold here, we are that much more excited to get away!!

Erin and her Personal Attendants, Stephanie and Sarah (with Genevieve who arrived Sept. 21)

Erin and Dan at Cucina in Kohler

Dan's 31st birthday with nephews Brady and Michael

Erin's 10 year high school reunion

Oktoberfest parade in La Crosse

Patrick with Sarah's bachelorette party at Oktoberfest

Bride and Groom: Sarah and Earl Hansen

Sisters-in-law: Leslie and Erin at the Hansen wedding

Mr. and Mrs. Raasch

More Wedding Pics...

...taken by my Uncle Robin

Bride and Groom!

Bride and Bridesmaids

Matron of Honor, Bride, Maid of Honor

Groom, Dads, Groomsmen and Ushers

The two cutest Ring Bearers!

Erin and her Pappy

Erin and "Pete"

The Kearns Family

The Kearns Family with Grandparents

The Wille/Carpenter Family

And this is my Dad's "tux" as soon as his official duties were finished

Wedding Weekend

Before we knew it, 2 more weeks flew by and the big weekend was here. We had the most perfect weekend and nothing could have made it better. Our rehearsal was held at Riverside Park...the rain held off until we finished and made our way over to the Freight House. We had a great dinner and many drinks there. And headed over to the Hospitality Suite at the Radisson for a few more. Friday night was a fairly sleepless night for me and bright and early Saturday morning, all the girls headed to the salon to start preparing for the day.

Dan and I decided to meet before the ceremony. We figured this was the only way that we would be able to get all of our pictures in. And lets be honest, with my nerves, it kept me from passing out on my way down the aisle :-) The weather was perfect. It was 70 degrees and partly cloudy with a nice breeze. We had a wonderful ceremony, great music and just couldn't have pictured it any different. Perfect is the only way we could describe the whole day.

One of my closest friends, roommate from college and bridesmaid, Emily, recently started a photography business. She is SO good. Here is Em's and my (so far) favorite...

To see some of the pictures she took from the big day, visit her blog here: http://www.regenthilldesigns.wordpress.com. She took as many as she could (1. she was in the wedding and 2. when the bus driver decided to almost drive into oncoming traffic, he slammed on the brakes and Dan fell on Emily's camera and broke the flash). My Uncle Robin was our photographer for the day...he took over 1000 pictures which I can't wait to see. I know they're going to turn out great and can't thank him enough for doing that for us. Not to mention that he drove from Colorado to do so.

In other news, we have postponed our honeymoon. We were headed to Riviera Maya tomorrow at 5am; however, the hurricanes have decided to give us rain and storms for the next 10 days, so we cashed in on the insurance and are going to reschedule sometime in the next couple of months. Stay tuned...and check back for more wedding pics!

Catching Up

Since we have just decided to join the wonderful world of blogging, we will take this opportunity to let you know what we have been up to this year. It has been crazy busy to say the least. In the midst of planning our wedding, we decided this would be a good time to take ourselves into debt for the next 30 years! We made an offer on a house in February and closed the last day of March...so we have officially been homeowners for 5 months.

We bought a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath ranch with a finished basement on just over a half acre lot. We were not prepared for the amount of yard work we now have, but we were very lucky to find a house that the previous owners had updated. It looks like 1960 on the outside, but has a whole different look on the inside. Our first and only major project for the time being (aside from painting every room) was to cover the sky blue vinyl flooring with laminate wood, which runs from the entry way through the kitchen, into the half bath and into the "fireplace room". We aren't sure what we're going to do with this room yet. For the past 6 months it has been deemed "the wedding room" housing all of the decorations and gifts.

Kitchen Floor (Before)

Den with carpet (Before)

Kitchen Floor (After)

Den Floor (After)

In May, Dan and I decided we needed a little break from the painting and rearranging and spent an extended weekend down in Austin, TX with my best friend and Maid of Honor, Elaine, and her boyfriend Chris. I had a frequent flyer ticket for Dan and Elaine cashed in her birthday present from Chris and flew me down there (yes, I did say her birthday present). I was only 7 months late. So we spent 4 days here...

...it was pretty rough. We spent our days in the sun and nights playing the Wii. And then it was back to reality again. We had a couple of wonderful wedding showers thrown for us...one in May by Dan's Uncle Ted and Aunt Marcia and one in June by my mom and Elaine. We also played in the annual Charlie Kearns Memorial Tournament in June, which was rained out both days for the first time ever (that I can remember anyway).

Dan's ride back into the clubhouse

I love stormy skies!

The majority of the summer was spent finishing the rest of the wedding details. We made invites, programs, chocolates, name cards, table numbers, etc.

Hard at work, but I had my good friend Miller Lite helping me out. My friend Emily helped me with the design!

We did manage to squeeze in our bachelor and bachelorette parties. I had the perfect weekend. The girls came into town on Friday. We had lunch at Cheesecake Factory and did some shopping out at Mayfair mall. We took it easy that night and hung out at my house...drinking wine around the fire pit.

Saturday, we started the day out with 9 holes of golf (does this sound more like a bachelor party?). Check out some of the golf pictures on Emily's photography blog: http://www.regenthilldesigns.wordpress.com/ (August 12 post). Afterward, we had a mini-shower at Leslie's house (my future sister-in-law), dinner at Mo's Irish Pub and then out to a couple of bars downtown.

At Bar Louie

Dan had his party a couple weekends later. They played golf on Friday at Rolling Hills (formerly Lac La Belle) and spent the evening at the Wille house shooting pool and hanging out. The big day was Saturday in the Dells. They played another 18 holes at Cold Water Canyon, had some dinner and drinks back at the cabin they rented at The Wilderness, played cards, went to the casino...and if you need to know the rest of the night's details, you'll have to ask Dan...