We made a trip to Rome, Georgia, to attend the wedding of Craig's cousin, Kayla Haase. She married Bradley Pogue, an officer in the Air Force, and will be moving to the DC area. The ceremony was held on the campus of Berry College in Rome, Kayla's alma mater. Her sister Kylie also attends Berry, and their mother Diana works there as well.
The ceremony and reception were beautiful, and the entire weekend was really enjoyable. It was good to catch up with Craig's extended family. Someone's got to get on the ball - there's no wedding scheduled for next summer! (As far as I know.)
We stayed in the Berry College guest cottages, which were just a stone's throw from the chapel where the ceremony took place. Dan, Barb, Craig, and I shared a nice cottage with two large bedrooms and a sitting area. We felt very distinguished - Denzel Washington stayed in Dan and Barb's room while he was filming "Remember the Titans" on the Berry campus, and Lance Armstrong stayed in our room not too long ago. I was half expecting to find a stash of yellow LiveStrong wristbands under the bed, but no luck. Our room:
It seems that every wedding I attend requires some sort of new dress. Here's a little warning for the future - buy the dress before you buy the wrapping paper. Otherwise you might coordinate a little too much. In this case, though, anyone who didn't know about my plight could just write it off as Northern weirdness!
In the Northern weirdness department....Diana now has her own stuffed loon that makes a loon call sound when you squeeze it. Every time I bumped my carry-on bag in the airport, we were treated to a loon call. The last time we saw the loon, it was riding on Diana's dashboard. Enjoy!
I haven't spent much time in the South (well, no time, actually), so it was interesting to see the landscape. They don't have that many trees in Iowa, and they don't have that much humidity in Minnesota. I did spend some time sampling that Southern delicacy, sweet tea. Final verdict...not too bad, but nothing I'll be making at home.
The rental car place in Atlanta was out of mid-size cars, so we were upgraded to an SUV. Craig had a good time getting some red Georgia clay on the tires.
We got the mud on our tires while driving up to the Old Mill on the mountain portion of Berry's campus. Students apparently used this to mill various crops produced on the campus farms. The wheel stands 42 feet high, and dwarfs the gaggle of preteen campers who were visiting at the same time as us.
Here's a shot of the wedding party just outside the chapel. We have more pictures, which we'll try to get online in some sort of album soon. Details to come...
Kayla was a beautiful bride, and it was universally agreed that the bridesmaids were exceptionally cute!
Before leaving on Sunday, we walked around the campus a bit and saw where Diana worked. Kylie discovered a swing...
Diana's office has been in this complex for the past few years. She'll soon be moving to a different building, and isn't too happy about it. Gee, wonder why?
