Ceremony Location and Such

We did some serious searching as for where to have our wedding ceremony, and by “we” I mean myself and Justin’s mother, Sandy.  Justin did not see the location until the day of the rehearsal.  Let’s just say he’s not that into wedding planning, thankfully I had Sandy.

I had just two things I was looking for in the location, I wanted it to take place outside and preferably near some trees.

We checked out the Bulow Plantation Ruins, which is close to Justin’s parent home, which is where we had already determined we would have our reception.  The Bulow Plantation is mostly associated with it’s history, being the ruins of a former sugar mill plantation.  It is very rustic and pretty, take a gander for yourself…

It was definitely in the running for our ceremony location, but I wanted to check out a couple more places before hopping on board with the plantation.

We then headed to Washington Oaks State Park, which is equally, if not more beautiful.

As you may have figured out, I have a thing for moss covered oak trees. L-O-V-E them.   I actually loved Washington Oaks so much, that I requested to book our ceremony there.  Unfortunately, our date was already taken by another couple.  Thanks a lot other couple! I guess it wasn’t meant to be.

I went back to good old google and did some more searching and found a place called Princess Place Preserve.  It is a nature preserve that is on the Matanzas River.

I pretty much fell in love with the old oak trees immediately.

It also has a charming old lodge on the property.  I ended up checking if our date was available and it was, so we were in.

Next, we had to get an isle to walk down and some decorations to make it look like a wedding was going to happen! So that’s just what we did.

Sandy made this amazing hydrangea wreath to hang on the tree that we decided would be our backdrop for the ceremony…

We decided to use shepherd hooks with hanging mason jars filled with more white hydrangeas to line the isles.

And in case you are dying to know(I know you are) the chairs are rentals from Rentaland.

I also made reserved signs using chalkboard markers and small chalkboards I found at Hobby Lobby, but I’ll tell you more about that later.

One more chalkboard sign that I made that I’ll explain more about soon.

We also decided to use our friend Mike Shackelford as the musician for the wedding ceremony and reception.  Because let’s be honest, who doesn’t like live music better than pre-recorded music?

I am so happy we chose the preserve.  It ended up being a nice sunny day and we both showed up.  Score!

PS it was a great back drop for pictures!

 

Backyard Issues

As I have previously mentioned we have some problems with flooding in our backyard when it rains heavily.  Justin has done a few things to try to fix the issue already, but we just aren’t winning the battle at this point.  Shall we take a look at what happens when it rains? Okay then!

Here was one time it flooded pretty bad.  Our whole patio floods about 2-3 inches when it rains pretty heavily.  Here is the other side of the patio…

Yup, those are floating dog toys! Good times!

Poor little plants, they drown in the lake our backyard becomes.

Here is the actual yard.  Char man loves it(he’s a big fan of water).

So, as you can see we are having quite the time here when it rains.  We are basically sitting inside crossing our fingers that the water doesn’t get one inch higher because it may actually seep under the patio doors.

So far we have had the gutters replaced/added to the back of the house, which has helped keep the water from pouring into our patio, but we still have major flooding issues.  From there Justin installed french drains, which helped slightly but they were still not quite doing the trick. These photos were taken after the french drains and gutters were installed, looking good right?

At this point we have had enough, sometimes there is a point when you just have to throw in the towel and call the professionals in.  We figured we were there, so Justin called a few landscaping companies and had them come out to our house to get some estimates.  We were looking for someone who can level the yard a bit, re-sod with a more durable grass(Charlie is tearing up the grass like mad), remove the hedges in the back and side of the yard, install a drainage system that drains to the street and plant new trees/hedges for privacy against the back fence.  It’s a tall order huh?  We would like to remove the holly bushes because they drop so many berries in the backyard and they are poisonous to the dogs, safety first people!  After receiving a few estimates we decided to go with  Horizon Landscaping.  They were not the least expensive, but they were fairly priced and they gave a proposal where they were going to complete everything the best way, not necessarily the cheapest way.  We figure if we are going to have this done we want it done right! Plus, Brian(the owner) is a pretty down to earth guy and he seems to know his stuff. If you need a landscaper in Jax check them out. I know what you’re thinking, get to the point Vanessa.  Well we headed to a nursery this weekend with Brian to pick out some new privacy solutions for the back fence.  Once we remove those back hedges we will be looking directly into the neighbors yard, not something I am looking forward to.  The nursery we went to was Williams Plant Nursery. Let me tell you, I fell in love with this place.  I guess I can just show you…

Look at all that green, so beautiful.

It had tons of huge, probably 200 year old oak trees all over the property.  They were gorgeous.

I would love to have a property with trees like this, maybe one day…

I love that ferns grow all over the huge branches.

Anyhow, we were there to check out some of our options, which I would like to share with you. Brian showed us a few choices, but everything seemed a little to small, we really wanted to have something that was already taller than our fence.  We looked at some bottle brush trees and Japanese blueberry trees, but ended up settling on a few 15-20 foot tall Chloe Magnolia trees.

Pretty huh?

They bloom beautiful flowers that are bigger than my head…

So that’s where were at with this backyard reno.  I will share more as we go, but we have plenty of time since the changes wont start until the end of this month.  Here’s one more oak tree before you go…

Can’t wait to see the results and have less of this…

and more of this…

Just kidding we don’t have room for all of this, were just hoping for some pretty grass and less flooding. Wish us luck!