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guest blogger jen: a special friday

Today is my last blog post for all of you. Thank you so much for letting me be a part of this amazing blog for a week!

I thought today I would focus more on Bev's wonderful boutique that I have been lucky enough to be a part of for over two years now! The Willows is a dream, and I secretly play house every day while I'm here.

Bev, I decided while you're gone I'm going to give away the store! heehee. We need some fun summer sales!
Friday Madness - Today only! 25% off all flip flops!!

Monday, July 12 - Saturday, July 17 - SALE!

First, we have a new promotion we are very excited about!

Spend $100 at The Willows 7/12 - 7/17 and get a voucher for $25 off any $50 purchase to use in August! Every $100 spent gets you another voucher - one week only!!

20% off all Seabags!

(please call the store for availabilty)

Free Gift with any $100 or more purchase! (while supplies last!)

Please call me at the store if you need any more details! It's going to be fun next week! Please stop in and say hello. I really enjoy meeting all of Bev's followers!

guest blogger jen - the wedding day!

Italians LOVE weddings. We were told this upon our arrival in Italy. Even knowing this, we could not have anticipated the outpouring of love from all who were involved in our wedding from our planner to absolute strangers on the street. It was an absolutely magical day that makes me smile every time it crosses my mind.

Erika, the owner of the bed and breakfast we were staying at, had some fun filling us in on Italian wedding traditions the day before our Friday wedding. She told us that we should not see each other the entire day before the wedding - which was not until 5pm! The whole crew had lots of fun keeping Vance and I apart that day! We only heard each other's voices once when Vance shouted down to me from a balcony to say hello!
The boys spent the morning doing their thing, and the women spent the morning relaxing! We went out to lunch and had an emotional time filled with happy tears in anticipation for the big evening! Then Vance's mom and I went to get our hair done at an Italian hairdresser - they spoke no English! Luckily, we had consulted with them previously while Erika translated. It began to rain as we got our hair done, but by the time I was getting ready in our hotel room, the sun was shining! In fact, during our wedding was the best weather we had there all week! I told all the girls at The Willows to pray for good weather during my wedding, and they came through for me!

Sergio, the owner of the restaurant where we were having our wedding dinner, picked me up from the hotel in a special car called a "tuk-tuk" to take me to the castle. It was so fun!

Our small, intimate ceremony was done in a private wing of the castle. It was spoken in Italian and then translated to English by Anna. It was very romantic!



After the ceremony, the tuk-tuk car took us through the streets of Malcesine where strangers started cheering and singing to the two of us! It was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced! People were even taking pictures! We rented a boat to take us around Lake Garda after the wedding. It was so beautiful at sunset!

The boat ride wouldn't be complete without champagne and plastic cups!

After the boat ride, we arrived at our restaurant to find a special buffet set up just for us! We toasted, ate appetizers and then sat down for dinner. The restaurant La Pace was so wonderful. They even surprised us by putting our cake out on the end of the dock so Vance and I could have our own special cake cutting ceremony at dark - complete with a sparkler on the cake! It was truly a dream day for the two of us.

Everyone in Malcesine drank these Aperol Spritzers - and they are so, so good! 1/3 Prosecco wine, 1/3 Aperol, 1/3 sparkling water, ice and a slice of orange. Mix and enjoy!

Thank you so much for letting me share my wedding story with you. I have a special surprise for all of our readers tomorrow!

guest blogger jen: the wedding trip!

Our 10-day trip started out leaving on a Saturday for London and then catching a flight to Munich, Germany from there. Our intent was to start in Germany, drive to Italy and then back to Germany after the wedding. The volcano had other plans for us. When we arrived in London, our flight kept saying "Enquire Airline". We came to find out that what this meant was our flight had been cancelled and there was no way we were getting to Munich as the airport had been closed due to the volcano! After a two-hour wait in line (after a 10 hour flight - we were not the peppiest couple at this point haha), we were told we could fly to Milan the next day. So, we were put up in a hotel and flown out the next morning to Milan where the rest of our family drove to join us!


Parking in Milan!

Milan was very fun! We, of course, went shopping all day! We also enjoyed this quaint outdoor cafe...

The birds were everywhere! I had to take a picture of them all over the tables!

The most amazing part about Milan was seeing the 4th largest church in the world, the Duomo. Pictures do not do this breath-taking cathedral justice and there are simply no words extraordinary enough to describe it. It is so large that one could literally spend an entire day there.

The interior of the Duomo. Just a tiny, tiny piece of this magnificent place!

After only a day in Milan, we had to head to Malcesine for our last bit of paperwork that needed to be done the next day. When we arrived, this was our view...


The town is literally breathtaking because it sits right on the edge of beautiful Lake Garda. Then when you look up, all you see is mountains! We took a cable car up the mountains one day - not only does the town have the tree-covered mountains, but also the snow-capped Alps in the distance!

We loved dining at the many restaurants on the lake. Seafood here is wonderful as they fish it right from the water! Ok, all the food was phenomenal - everything you hear about food in Italy is exactly right!

Here's the gang enjoying the day! My Alternative sweater from The Willows was my wardrobe for many pictures!

A closer view of the castle - it is so beautiful!

I can't say enough about Hotel Erika - the bed and breakfast we stayed at! We picked her because of her close proximity to the castle and because of the amazing reviews we read online about her hotel. She is an amazing woman, and truly became like family in our short stay with her (she's on the right in this picture)!

Here is a sampling of our breakfast every morning. She always had farm-fresh eggs hardboiled with adorable little egg covers! There was always more food than you could ever dream of eating and the table linens were different every day. She told us that every year she takes a trip to Paris where she finds many of the accessories for her hotel. How nice would that be???


We sat at the same table every morning so on the morning of our wedding, Erika had decorated the table for good luck. It was so sweet and wonderful.

Well, that's it for today - I am excited for tomorrow when I share our wedding day with you!

guest blogger jen: the proposal

hello friends...jen here - thrilled to be guest blogging while Bev enjoys some family time and sunshine at the beach! Bev thought it might be fun for me to expand on my wedding that was last posted here since quite a few of you asked for more pictures, and I hope that everyone will enjoy!

I decided since I have a week to write, I might as well start with the proposal first. There are so many details, but I will try to make this as short and sweet as possible!
My husband, Vance, was very good at keeping me completely surprised the night he proposed. I can pretty much figure out anything - if he had even uttered the word "ring" I probably could have immediately told him the date, time and location of where he was proposing. However, I was completely fooled because Vance picked the day of his parent's anniversary (which happens to be Valentine's Day - how romantic!) and had them come down from Wisconsin for the occasion! I thought we were planning a surprise night for them (dinner, stay at a local resort...), when really the entire night was for me! While Vance's mom and I enjoyed a day of getting our hair done, lunch and shoe shopping, Vance was running around like crazy making sure all the plans were in place! Here is the set-up:

Restaurant

Ring

Airline Ticket to get away quickly in case he got cold feet (haha, joking!)

Vance took me and his parents out to the restaurant where we had our first date. When dessert arrived, I was very taken aback when the waiter set a special dessert in front of me which wasn't a dessert at all, but rather a bowl flipped upside-down and decorated with whipped cream and frosting. When I finally figured out that I was supposed to flip the bowl over, a perfectly wrapped box was sitting there waiting for me to open. "Diamond earrings?" i thought to myself...then I looked at Vance who was now a little teary-eyed and he said to me "I've waited two years, two months and 11 days for this moment." That's when the room kind of went black and everything went silent and I couldn't get my fingers to open the giftbox! After what seemed like an eternity I opened the box to reveal the most perfect ring that Vance had picked out all on his own (he confessed later it had taken him over a year!). Vance got down on one knee and asked me to marry him and between my sobs I think I said yes. The best part was he had invited my sister to come take pictures of the entire thing as it happened, and I didn't even notice she was there until the end! It was so special, and I'm so happy to have these moments captured as they happened.

One of the most special moments came later in the night when we got home to the house and our best friends were waiting at the house to celebrate with us. Vance had planned everything. I was so touched that they had given up their Valentine's Day alone to spend with us. Do you like my veil my sister bought me for the occasion??

I hope you all enjoyed my proposal story - next post will be all about planning for the big day!