A Savannah-Themed Wedding

One of my good friends that I have grown up with got married on March 2.  Stephanie Acheson and I have always celebrated birthdays and random events together.  Our parents are good friends and we attended Pinewood Church together.  She not only took my engagement photo pictures, but she did all of the planning and execution of decorations at both my wedding ceremony and reception.  So, of course, I had to make a special trip down to see her on her very special day!

 Stephanie looked absolutely gorgeous!  She got married at the Orange Park Country Club.  The irony was that I traveled away from Savannah to go to a Savannah-themed wedding!  Rob Burris (her new husband) proposed to her in front of the fountain at Forsyth Park in Savannah.  The bulletin had the fountain printed on the front.

 This picture isn't that good, but it has the first kiss as husband and wife!

 My dad played the Viola in this gazebo (along with the rest of the orchestra).

 Curtis was unable to make it, so I was seated at the Pinewood table without dates.  We had a great time!  Going along with the Savannah theme, each table had a different square name. We were at Calhoun Square.  Here I am with Holly & Melissa!

I thought this was a neat idea - the food was family-style.  One of my Pinewood friends, Katie, was 3 weeks away from delivering her baby boy.  She wanted more mashed potatoes so we had a whole plate delivered in front of her seat while she was away.

 Look at Katie's excitement when she arrived back and saw the mashed potatoes! :) Haha!

 I didn't see these pictures until later, but 3 of my friends took pictures with my glasses on.  Here's the lovely Melissa Wittman. She has always been a great friend and whenever I spend time with her, we are able to just pick right back up where we left off!

 Here is the beautiful Holly Tolson!  She helped out in the youth group when I was a senior in high school.  She also went to Covenant Seminary (where Curtis went) so she is a mutual friend of both of us.

 Lastly, here's sweet Sylvia Donaldson.  She was in a middle school Bible Study that I co-led when I was in college.  It's hard to believe that now she herself is in college at UNF!

Curtis didn't attend the wedding because he went to a Pastors Conference in Augusta, GA.  When I arrived back in Savannah, Curtis surprised me with a yummy piece of cake from Boll Weevill!  

This piece was called "7th Heaven" - it was filled with chocolate cake, cheesecake, ganache, and various chocolate chips!  What a fun weekend!

NYC - Day 5

This day was our last full day in New York City.  We went to Redeemer Presbyterian for church.  It was a great service!  Curtis really respects Dr. Tim Keller, the Senior Pastor of Redeemer.  Even though he wasn't preaching that week, we were happy to visit.  (Besides, we knew we would hear him at General Assembly in just a few days!)

We decided to go to John's Pizzeria for lunch.  This was recommended to me by a co-worker and it was rated very highly on Tripadvisor.

This pizzeria is one of the largest in the United States!  This restaurant was previously a cathedral and over 500 can be seated.  The pizza was yummy!

Next, we went to Central Park.  It was refreshing to come here after spending several days in the city because the pace was much slower here.  I think it was one of my favorite places to go.  Pictured above is a structure that we saw as soon as we entered Central Park.

There were lots of large rocks that you could lounge on.

Here's Curtis relaxing.

Here I am!

The view was great!

I really wanted to see the fountain.

Here's an up-close picture!

Curtis and I in front of the fountain! :)

Isn't this gorgeous!?

After this, we went back to Times Square to try for the Wicked lottery again.  And we lost for the third time. :(  At least we will get to see it in Jacksonville! 

For dinner, we went to a restaurant called Via Della Pace in Little Italy.  The food was awesome - probably one of our favorite places to eat!  Here I am in the restaurant, it was a cute little couch with pillows that I was sitting on!

Our final plan before we left NYC was to have a caricature taken of the two of us.  We had this taken in Times Square - I love how the artist put an "I <3 Margaret" shirt on Curtis. 

Next up: we'll be traveling to Virginia Beach for General Assembly tomorrow!

NYC - Day 1

For those of you that have been following our blog for a while, you know that we go on an anniversary trip each year.  We know that we won't always have the opportunity to do this each year, but we plan on doing it whenever we have the ability.

For our 3 year anniversary, we decided to travel to New York City.

We left on June 1st when a sweet friend from our church drove us to Jacksonville for our flight to NYC.  (Thanks Becca Taylor!)  Once we arrived in New York, got our subway tickets and checked into our hotel, we didn't have but a few hours to spend looking around the city.  So, we headed to the Financial District to see some of the well-known buildings and figures.

 I'm not really the best at explaining what each picture represents, so I will do my best, but you will find lots of pictures in the first day.  (Hey, we were excited!)

 This was the New York Stock Exchange.

 This was where George Washington took the oath to become the first president of the United States.  Notice the huge statue of GW!

 Everything was huge!

 Here's one of the Donald Trump buildings.  I think this is the one that they show on The Apprentice.

 Some cool artwork in the middle of the city.  We eventually stopped taking pictures of the artwork because there was lots of it!

 The famous bull.  I wish I could say that I knew about this well-known bull before I went to New York, but I didn't!  

 Here is the new Freedom Tower that they are building to replace the Twin Towers.  Apparently, it will be completed in 2013.

 We walked far to get a good picture of Ground Zero, but I don't think it really helped that much. Ground Zero is in the top of this picture.  It was all covered up and blocked, so we had to take this picture from several blocks away.

 A dear friend of mine told me to check out the church across from Ground Zero.  I wish I could have gotten a chance to go inside the church, but we just observed it from the outside.

 There was a little park around there with lots of unique artwork.  Here I am standing in front of this rainbow colored structure.

 I loved the way this looked with the huge building in the background of the fountain.

 Here's Curtis chilling out in front of the fountain.  

 Here I am in front of the fountain!

 We went to a restaurant called "Biddy Early's" - it was not one of our favorite places to eat, but the food just got better from there at all the other restaurants!

 Here I am at the restaurant too! :)

 Curtis told me that we should head to Times Square to see what it looks like at night.  Little did we know that we'd be going to Times Square almost every night!  We went to the m&m's store and I took a picture of these rotating colorful m&m's because sometimes Curtis calls me his "m&m."

 It really felt like we were at the center of the universe!

 There were tourists everywhere! If I lived in New York City, I probably would avoid Times Square!

 Here's the Nasdaq building.  

Lastly, we got the courage to have a tourist take a picture of us in Times Square!  You can see all the chaos behind us - I just kept telling Curtis throughout our trip that this place is crazy busy!