The Wedding Day!

The big day arrived September 12th. Jonathan and I were running around, taking care of a few last minute items… Getting things set up for the reception… doing sound tests on the speakers… and then we were off to the church to relax.

 

Here we are, chilling on Reverend Klein’s couch in his office.

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Virginia and Martha were out and about with our photographer eating ice cream and posing for pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While we were doing our thing, our ushers (Nat, Blake, Ted and Will left to right) were greeting our guests and seating them. I didn’t hear any complaints from guests, so I suppose they managed to do it without tripping anyone, or accidentally seating someone across the street.

We were ready in the front, the music was filling the church, and it was time for the main event to begin.

 

 

 

 

Martha led the charge down the aisle… and from here, we’ll let the pictures do the talking for a little while…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ceremony was short and sweet. We sang a hymn together, we said our vows. I kissed my lovely bride, and we ran out of the church to our waiting “limo”. The “Limo” was Jonathan’s Big Blue Dodge… he cleaned it all up and waxed it and everything. Of course we had to go for a ride in the bed of the truck…

The Reception!

The reception was held at Moody Hall at VMI after the ceremony and some pictures.

Tom Newhall’s New Corner Grocery band started off the cocktail hour by playing some bluegrass tunes for us, while servers walked around with trays of bacon wrapped scallops and other lovely food selections. (I cooked bacon wrapped scallops the night that I proposed to Virginia) For beverages, we brought Appalachian Ale from Boone, and wines from Rockbridge Vineyards.

 

 

 

 

 

We talked to our guests and enjoyed a few drinks before going inside and getting things kicked off.

After being announced, Virginia and I had our first dance to Ray Charles singing “It had to be you”. As a side note, we did away with the typical annoying wedding DJ. I took care of the music selection and our friend Josh took care of stopping and starting the iPod. Using this method, things went smooth as silk, there were no hiccups in the music, no annoying DJ blabber, and of course, we controlled the volume.

 

Virginia and her father danced to Paul Simon’s “Father and Daughter”

 

 

 

 

… and my mother and I danced to Barry Manilow’s “I am your child”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Martha delivered a lovely toast followed by a toast from Jonathan, and a prayer from Virginia’s father. Now, we were ready to eat.

For dinner music, I played a bunch of selections from the Vitamin String Quartet. They take classic rock tunes (and some contemporary) and play them as a string quartet. Pretty awesome stuff. For those who notice that the tunes were classic rock, it was an added bonus… for those who didn’t notice, it was just nice violin music. So… win-win.

Here we are on the VMI parade field in front of the barracks. It was a lovely day, and great weather. We’ll finish this post off by letting the pictures do the talking again.

Time for a few BIG updates.

So.. big things have happened, but the blog updates regarding those big things have been relatively quiet to this point.

But, seeing as how it’s “Winter” Break, and I have some free time… there are some updates in the works that should explain a few things… Such as…

and maybe a bit more… maybe a few surprises… Keep close watch over the next few days… big updates will be happening, never before seen pictures will be emerging, and I’m projecting that something in the nature of 10-15 new blog postings will be occurring.

Early November Update

Pictures for this post are contained in the following albums: November 09 Gallery  and Day 1 Gallery.

Well. Things have been busy. Weather has been… kind of hit and miss honestly…

The above has been a very common site around here lately. With the exception of a few days here and there that have been truly gorgeous. For instance, this past weekend Virginia’s folks came down (to bring us our new “pimp-mobile”

). So, Sunday we went up to Damascus, VA with Virginia’s folks, and enjoyed a lovely walk on a 70 degree November day. The walk was on the Virginia Creeper Trail, which is just one of many trails in Damascus that is available to walk or bike on. Someday, I’d like to get up there and rent a bike for a day. They’ll even take you up to a higher elevation area of the trail so you can basically just coast back down to the bike rental place.

We still have our pumpkins out on the deck, which gives me the opportunity to play around with them whenever I get bored. Here we have the “thug” pumpkin, complete with “grill” that says “PLAYA” on the top, and “4Life” on the bottom. He grew up on the wrong side of town… there’s nothing we could do about it, but we’re trying to make him a productive part of society.

Here’s Josh. Sitting on the toilet. On his porch. … … Nothing too odd right? Well, there is a good explanation. Josh and I decided that we were going to tear into his house with a little bit of remodeling. I think it may have been more of my idea, but I just managed to talk Josh into it. We took down 2 God-Awful lights in his kitchen, put in 4 recessed six-inch can lights over the counter and “future island”, and where there was no overhead lighting, we added a ceiling fan in the living room, and in the Master Bedroom. All in all, it was a good time. Josh got to play in his attic, and he picks things up amazingly quick… I may draw him away from sitting behind a desk with the lure of the flashy construction world.

In other news, I got a new camera.(As you can see if you keep up with our Zannel Photos)  Long story, but got a KILLER deal. For any photogs out there, it’s a Canon T1i DSLR camera. And it’s awesome. So, I’ve been playing with that for the past few days, as long as the weather has been nice. I’m still getting the hang of things, but hopefully, this will result in better pictures here on the blog. This is the reason for the “Day 1 Album” above. Basically, the pictures in that album are from the first day of shooting. I’ve got a bucket-full of books on photography, but if anyone has some recommendations, I’d always be open to those.

We got the “proofs” from our wedding photographer. some good looking stuff in there. As soon as we get the first group of pictures, I’ll let people know. At that time, I’ll also outline how you can get these pictures, so that you may print and whatnot.

Until next time……

Getting some professional Pics!

We’re starting to get a few of the professional pictures rolling in…. as we get them, I’ll be updating the albums here: Wedding and Reception ;  with all of the pictures in a reduced quality format… Very very very reduced quality… So, if there any any prints that you’d like… Just drop me a line and let me know, and I’ll e-mail the original file to you, or otherwise make it available. For now, enjoy a few pics!

That’s the teaser for now… We SHOULD have all of the pictures very soon… Once we do, I’ll let everyone know… and I’ll write up a proper blog entry describing the whole event…

Intermediate Update

October Pictures: Linky!

The plan was to have a good blog update with all of the wedding photos and whatnot… But… we’ve yet to get our professional photos back… So, that will have to wait. In lieu of the professional pictures, you can have a look at the pictures that we took the day after the wedding, and pictures that were taken by some of the guests : Wedding Album #1 … This album contains the day after, the rehearsal dinner, and some others…

There have been quite a few updates on Zannel                            (The little Box over here ------------------------->     )           

So, flip through all of the new pictures on Zannel, they’ve kind of become a bunch of pictures from our kitchen… but there are other pictures on there as well, like from the Beer Fest, and various other interesting things. It’ll only take a little while to make it through them… so… DO IT! There’s also a larger Zannel box all of the way down at the bottom of the blog… Under the last post.

In the meantime, this is what we’ve been up to:

Rachel and Victor came up on Friday. Rachel brought some AMAZING Satay Chicken. I’ll have to get the recipe from her, because it was awesomeness like no other. To go along with the chicken, Virginia made sweet and sour Thai noodles, and I made a nice salad. We went to bed at a decent time… and were up and at the Farmer’s Market in the 30 degree morning. Farmer’s Market was followed by breakfast at Troy’s diner, and then, we went shopping so Rachel could get some stuff. By this time, it was 11AM, so…. it was time for a wine tasting at Peabody’s. We made it through the 11 wines in the tasting, and decided that we wanted to have a beer tasting. So… we picked up a few beer, tossed them in the fridge, and I made a pesto chicken salad for lunch. After lunch… it was GAME ON.

You can see above what we tasted. It was a good time. Then, we watched some TV / took and nap and Rachel and Victor after a few hours took off back to Charlotte because Rachel had to fly to Texas today (Sunday) at 2PM… Virginia and I waved goodbye, and laid around the rest of the day… we accomplished nothing.

This is what we woke to this morning… No big accumulation, but it’s snow. In October. I really don’t think it was necessary, and I wonder who ordered this weather.

Weather be damned, we decided to head on out, so we donned multiple layers of clothing and braved the elements to go to the Woolly Worm Festival ( http://www.woollyworm.com/ ) in Banner Elk. This was, needless to say, a unique experience. There were your typical fair-like crafts people selling all sorts of painted saw-blades, cork pop guns, pictures that could have come off of my blog, but glued to a chunk of thick paper… You know, things like that. Also, there was food.

Above, Virginia gives a smoked turkey leg a good talking to. Virginia made it away unharmed. The turkey leg didn’t fare as well. The carnage will be in the history books for years to come.

Here’s the idea of the Woolly Worm festival… People come, they bring their worms, they race their worms. Behind the huge man-sized worm above, on the yellow wall there are a bunch of vertical strings with a black start line, and red finish line… If you look hard on the picture, you can see the tape start and finish lines. People line up with their worms, and place them on the strings. When the announcer yells “GO” everyone lets their worm begin to climb the string towards the finish line. They encourage their worms by clapping, yelling, and blowing them… wait… that didn’t sound right… they blow on the worms… in the direction that they want them to go.

Here, Virginia checks on some of the worms available for purchase.  There is even a set of practice strings set up so you can test your worm before you buy it… to make sure it’s from a winning lineage.

Until next time, enjoy the view from the top of our mountain…

We looked at Art! We’re Classy!

Picture Albums for July and August

So last Saturday, the weather was (*gasp*) nice in Boone. So, we started off the day with a trip to the Farmer’s Market… got some nice, fresh tomatoes… and our amazing bread… and a few other items, but those other items are inconsequential compared to the bread. That’s why we wake up early in the morning.

After getting the required items from the Farmer’s Market, we went over to campus to take a look at the new art that’s been scattered around. This year’s winner was rather outstanding. I’m a big fan.

Here’s Virginia standing in front of this massive metal mer-woman. Its tail section is made out of old parking lot light poles. The front is a network of steel tubing and steel covering. Let’s take a look at the detail up front.

Really, the thing is amazing. Future visitors to Boone, you’ll have to come on to campus and take a look. The art walk consisted of about 12 different pieces… all within walking distance around campus. My other favorite was this one.

This big man was made out of many smaller pieces of wood, that were all screwed together.

You can see some of the detail above. In August’s picture album, you can see the rest of the art pieces, with the exception of the 2 up on King Street… I’ll get around to those sooner or later.

It’s starting to get closer and closer to wedding time, so plans are still getting nailed down. As you saw in the last update, VA had a wedding shower the last time we were home, and last Friday, there was a wedding shower here in Boone hosted by Virginia’s work friends. It was a rather lovely affair, and I was actually invited to this one! Good times were had by all, I made wings, we had good times and good food while hanging out with some great people.

As another note, you’ll notice a new little feature in our blog. We’ve now started using Zannel. Zannel is like Twitter I suppose… but it lets me upload new pictures to the blog directly from my phone. In the Zannel feed now, you’ll find pictures of me making my glorious hot wing sauce, of a lovely garden just up the hill from us, and a few pictures from out motorcycle ride that we took on Sunday. The real time to watch the Zannel feed will be during the events of the wedding (if you’re not able to be there in person) and when we go on our honeymoon I’ll be shooting photos with my camera and the phone along the way. Pictures from the phone, you’ll be able to see as I upload them from various parts of the trip, and you’ll be able to see where we are on a map on Zannel. (Providing that I can get that figured out.) So, you can look at the Zannel slideshow in the upper right, or check out our Zannel page at http://www.zannel.com/trovatoam .

Stay tuned. Pictures of the new apartment will be coming soon.

Bridal Shower in Lexington

No motorcycles this week. Sorry. Instead Aaron and I headed home to Lexington. We got our marriage license (!), met with the florist, met with the pianist for the church service, and I got to go to an awesome bridal shower that my sister hosted for me.

The theme of the shower was a "dress-up" tea party. We requested that the guests come wearing something from the back of their closet that they thought they might never wear again. Old bridesmaid dresses, or fabulous shoes that you bought, but then never had a place to wear, etc.

It was fun to see what people came up with. Everyone was very creative and stylish too, I might add.
A special shout-out to our prize winners: Jennifer Wells for her studded leather pants, LuAnn Balfrey for her see-through blouse and fringed leather vest, and Betty Goad for her vintage trousseau dress. The Trovato family also got into the spirit of the day.


And of course, a very big thank-you to my Mom and my sister for hosting such a wonderful party. A great time was had by all! Note my nifty sash. Martha made that! I think I might wear it to the rehearsal dinner, because it is so awesome.


Also, thanks to Claudia Schwab for taking pictures!

Today was a sad day

Well, Kind of.

Today, we finished off our move by cleaning to old apartment. The cleaning process wasn’t at all bad… it actually went really quick. But… man… we’re going to miss the old apartment. We got our cat in that apartment. We got engaged in that apartment. We made our first friends in Boone in that apartment. We entertained, we relaxed, we cuddled on the cold nights, and opened the door to the back porch on hot nights to let the breeze come in through the screen door. I learned how to make perfect steaks in that tiny kitchen. So many good things happened there.

But, we’re in the new place now. We’ll be married in a few months while living here. We got new furniture here. Furniture together. Before all of the furniture we had came from either Virginia or from me. For the first time, we went and got furniture together. Grace is adjusting to the new place rather well, she spent the first day creeping around, trying to figure things out… But now, she’s gotten somewhat used to this place… We’re adjusting to our bigger kitchen, to having an extra room, to having a new couch, futon, a set of tables and a nice new book-shelf.

So, Come visit. Pictures will be coming reasonably soon… but I’m in no hurry. we’d love to have some visitors almost any time. Right now, we’re still getting ready for the wedding, so that means all sorts of planning and decisions, but visitors are a welcome break. As long as we’ll be here instead of in Lexington nailing down plans.

On another note, Virginia’s old phone gave up the ghost while she was at the beach. So. If she had your number before… odds are, she doesn’t have it now. So, give her a call, she’d love to hear from you; and save your phone number.

July 1 Was my Birthday!

Picture album: Linky!

Well, another year has snuck up on me. I’m now… 28? So… that’s… neat. I dunno. I guess after a while, birthdays don’t mean too much anymore. I’ve been able to drive for 12 years, been able to vote for 10, legally drinking for 7 years and the 26th birthday resulted in slightly lower insurance rates. So… what do I have to look forward to now as far as birthdays? Social Security? That won’t exist by the time I’m old enough… Retirement? That’s a long way off. Oh well. It was still a good day.

For a while, I’ve wanted to go around and take pictures of some of the Church signs around here… Something about being in this area of the US means that churches normally have some really GREAT fire and brimstone messages on their signs. One of my favorites that I’ve seen recently is “Stop, Drop, and Roll doesn’t work in Hell.” So After Virginia made me a lovely pancake and bacon breakfast in the morning, we laid around for a bit, watched the latest episode of True Blood, and hopped in the car to go take some pictures. For the most part, the church signs were disappointing. As a reminder for next year, I shouldn’t wait until my birthday to do something like this. As we get closer to Independence Day, the church signs become less fire and brimstone, and more patriotic. The below church signs are about the best we saw.

Hmm… Jesus wants to spend the night? Did his mother say it was ok? As long as it’s ok with his parents, it’s fine with me. Will he be coming for dinner? Should I set out an extra plate?

Here’s my little sinner. She’s definitely adding up to be big trouble…

Since Church signs were a bust, we stopped off outside of Damascus and spent a little time on the Virginia Creeper trail… or, the Creepy Virginia trail… It is a rather nice trail, but to take full advantage of it, some bicycles will be necessary… so, an upcoming goal is for Virginia to learn how to ride a bicycle.

After taking pictures and driving around, we cam back to the apartment, where Virginia made me a lovely birthday dinner of pasta and shrimp, and then topped it off with my favorite… A plain pound cake. No icing, no craziness. Just plain. Man do I love a pound cake. One of these days though, I might have to try making the Paula Deen pound cake… I think it requires a bucket of butter, a pile of Crisco, and maybe some bacon grease. It was a good birthday though, nice and laid back, relaxing, just how I like it.

We’re heading to VA for Independence Day and Virginia’s Birthday. I should have some good pictures and stories to post from that.

As an added bonus… here’s a picture of a bird taunting Gracie… the bird must have been around the block a few times… Gracie would attack the glass, and the bird wouldn’t even flinch… This went on for a good 15 minutes.