Living the retirement dream

Saturday June 23 is a very big day for us.  Our oldest daughter Jennifer is getting married to the love of her life, Rob McMahan in Newport Rhode Island.  We left London Monday evening and arrived home in Boston about 10pm.  Our week was the usual Boston busy with medical and dental appointments and catching up with family and friends.  We had a lobster dinner with Jennifer, Rob and Jackson on Tuesday night and hamburgers with Jason, Catarina and family on Wednesday evening.  We also squeezed in a lunch with Katiti & Bill on Wednesday and another lunch on Thursday with our neighbors Mary & Sherif Nada and Maeve Markey.  We drove to Newport Thursday evening as we wanted to be available to help Jennifer and Rob with all of the wedding preparations on Friday.  We spent Thursday night at Rob’s mother Kiki McMahan’s  house which is a beautiful Victorian in the middle of Newport’s Historic District.  Friday morning was spent helping with the set up of the Friday night “I do” party at the estate of Kiki’s brother Jan and wife Carrie Slee.

After the wedding rehearsal, Kiki hosted a fabulous pre-wedding party with a raw bar of bottomless oysters, shrimp and littlenecks with accompanied passed hors-d’œuvres followed by a sit-down dinner of lobsters, PEI mussels, steamed clams, corn on the cob, salad and grilled chicken, not to mention an open bar.

There was also live music by a duo who played great tunes that had us dancing most of the night.  We were definitely the first ones dancing, at times all alone, and we were still going at the end of the night.  We met a lot of Rob and Jenn’s friends who we already knew and made a lot of new friends.

This video is long but very cute and worth watching for the surprise at the end.

It was an absolutely fabulous pre-wedding party.  We have to thank Kiki and her brother Jan and wife Carrie for hosting such a memorable event.  We spent Friday and Saturday nights at The Francis Malbone House Inn which is a highly recommendable place to stay in Newport Rhode Island.  They provide their guests with a beautiful, tasty afternoon tea and a gourmet breakfast every day.  Saturday morning Jim went out for a short run by himself as Sandy did not bring any running gear.  We then enjoyed The Francis Malbone House Inn’s breakfast and walked Newport’s waterfront Thames Street before starting preparations for daughter Jennifer’s wedding.  The wedding was held at 41º North, a downtown hotel which provided a very elegant waterfront venue.

Jennifer had a suite there and hired a make up artist and three hairdressers to prep the female members of the wedding party.

Misty cloudy weather prevented the wedding ceremony from taking place on the deck outdoors where Jennifer was to make a grand staircase entrance.  Chairs were moved to an inside room where the reception was to be held and an aisle was formed for her to walk down.  Jenn & Rob included all members of their immediate family in the bridal procession.  First down the aisle was Jennifer’s stepmom Carol escorted by her son, Jenn’s half brother Daniel.  Next was Rob’s mother, Kiki, with her grandson Keegan followed by Sandy escorted by grandson Jackson who is Jenn’s son.  Last to go down before the bride were Rob’s nieces Kiley and Avery.  Jim then accompanied Jennifer halfway down the aisle where her dad waited to bring her the rest of the way to Rob.  Christian, Rob’s brother, was best man.  The brief ceremony was performed by their good friend Teri Degnan who had been credentialed for the day.  The misty weather ended long enough for wedding photos, cocktail hour and first dance to be held outside on the waterfront piers and quay.  The music was provided by Troy Ramey who competed in The Voice and wowed the judges in his blind audition with a wonderful rendition of Wild World. Rob and Jenn’s first dance was to this song.  The reception followed a Newport boat theme of elegantly dressed tables lined up banquet style on port and starboard.  Jenn and Rob picked the welcoming pineapple motif on their invitations and followed through with it by making homemade pineapplecello which they bottled and adorned with guests names and seating assignment.  There were so many nice touches that truly personalized their wedding, but our favorite was the printed cards with the wedding program on one side and Jennifer’s tribute to family on the back side.  Tulips were chosen to adorn the tables in honor of Rob’s mother Kiki’s Dutch heritage.  The pearls in the sash on her gown was a nod to her mother Sandy who loves and wears pearls often.  Something old was a St. Christopher medal pinned inside her gown next to her heart.  This medal was given to her dad by Jenn’s grandmother to keep her only child safe when he was sent to Vietnam in 1967 as a 1st Lt. in the US marines.  Something new was her wedding gown, something borrowed were earrings she borrowed from Sandy.  The same ones she wore when she married Jim.  Something blue was a blue charm with a a picture of her grandmother in her bouquet.

The meal selections of salmon, filet mignon or chicken were delicious.  We ended the night celebrating the union of Jenn and Rob/Rob & Jenn as their friends jokingly refer to them by dancing the night away.  We feel so blessed to have Rob as our new son-in-law and stepdad to Jack and we warmly welcome his family as an extension of ours.