My baby is wed!

On a beautiful (and warm 95 degree) day in May, my baby girl, Rebecca Allison Allmendinger married her long time sweetie, Todd Newcomer. Family and friends gathered from all over the country to share the special day with them. The wedding was at the Dallas/Fort Worth Lakes Hilton, next to a beautiful lake (and gratefully, for the most part, in the shade).



The reception was at the Fort Worth Zoo where Becky and Todd had invited four zoo animal: a Alsatian Hound, a opossum, a baby alligator and a penguin to join us. About 150 guests had a great time. I wore a purple dress and balled like a baby. I am happy to report that my toast was not only well received by the guest (lots of laughs, which was my intention. Would have been really bad if I intended the toast to be serious!) but made my lovely daughter laugh and cry and almost lose it! The clincher was reminding Todd I did not make him take a driving test!



The wedding week was such fun. I left Pennsylvania on the evening of April 28 to attend a Museum Store Association conference in Rosemont, Illinois, not too far from my folks and my sisters' homes, which made it very nice to stay with my family and drive to the conference each day (thank you, Nese, for the room and board and use of your car!) While at the conference, I represented the museum at a Members' Market and made a video. If I can figure out how, I will attach the video to this post.

Right after the conference, I headed down to Dallas for the last week of wedding preparations. I stayed with Becky and Todd at their lovely new house for several night. Each day, they had a task for me to accomplish! On Tuesday I made cookies for the open house/rehearsal dinner scheduled for Friday. On Wednesday, we (Becky's dad, Mark and step-mom, Pam and I) planted gardens around the trees in the front of their yard and readied the outside for guests and ran various errands with Beck: dropping goodie bags off at the hotels, picking up baby equipment for Jamie, Jeff and baby Wyatt who arrived the next day. On Thursday, I cleaned bathrooms and the kitchen and the guests started to arrive. We had a big communal dinner at a Mexican restaurant that night and my parents and sister met Wyatt for the first time and George arrived for the wedding weekend after finishing up his semester grades.



Friday the official activities started. The rehearsal went very well and the Texas bar-be-que afterwards was so much fun. On the wedding day, Saturday, May 7th, we started the day with a pedicure and then arrived at the bridal suite to be "prettied up." The weather was fine and the couple was beautiful I will post more pictures as I get them. What a wonderful day which I will remember always.

Becky and Todd, I am so very happy for you both and we love you with all our hearts. Boo, you are so precious to me. I hope you will always be this happy and know that you are very loved!