T Stands for the Niece's Wedding

     Hi everyone. And hello to everyone who stops by for T day at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog. I hope the new week is starting off in a good way for you.

      This past weekend we had the niece's wedding. Here's a few photos and a bit of a story about it.

      The niece, Ally, and her then fiance, Nick, had their big event at a summer camp on the lake where my mother-in-law's house is located. The camp is actually a summer school, and once they are done for the season, they rent out part of the facilities for weddings and other events.

    My husband's family had been on the lake since the late 1940's, and I've been visiting there since 1982. In all the years I've been going to my mother-in-law's house, I have never  been on the grounds of the camp school. It was quite lovely, and it made a beautiful place to hold a somewhat rustic  wedding.

     This was also a somewhat budget wedding. Now that somewhat budget phrase is deceiving because it was not a cheap wedding. (Is any wedding inexpensive?) However, the father of the bride, my chef brother-in-law, did all the food. That was a lot since over 100 people came to the wedding. And then there was decorating and setting up.  A lot of that happened on Friday evening. My husband and I went over to help them out. The wedding was Saturday afternoon, and my husband went back on Saturday morning to help finish building the wedding arbor and with a few other things in the kitchen.

     The bride wanted the dinner plates to be assorted old china, and I helped with a little bit of the washing. You can see all the plates that needed to be washed and ready for setting the tables.

     I didn't get many decent photos from the actual wedding because the 2 empty rows in front of us filled up with members of the wedding party and the bride's parents. Plus the photographers kept popping in that space to get their photos. But you can get a general view of the wedding scene in this photo.

    I honestly don't know if the old china plates really made the table all that fabulous, since everyone had plastic cups and wooden compostable silverware, but the tables still looked nice. 

    Plus you could bring home your plate as a souvenir if you wanted to. My husband's cousin who sat next to me, collected 11 matching plates and she was thrilled. It was even better for her since those plates had been her grandmother's. (My mother-in-law has/had several sets of china which no one wants because they require hand washing and with metal edges, can't be microwaved. These were donated to the wedding. The cousin and my husband share the same grandmother, so it's nice that someone wanted those plates to keep them in the family.) You can see the edge of her plate, underneath the plastic bread plate, on the bottom left of the table.

    I ended up with 3 plates that belonged to some great aunt. (I think they were Aunt Eva's, but I can't remember her name-shame on me.) I really didn't care if I had 3. I really just wanted 1 to put out on my dining room hutch as a memory of the event. ( And no, if the photo of the plate looks weird, the plate isn't missing an edge-but it's my hand holding it.)

    Not to make this post too long (plus I haven't really gone through the wedding photos yet), let me jump to my drink photos for T day this week. This first one might look a little strange as why would there be a drill on the dining table?

    Nobody brought corkscrews for the bottles of wine to have with dinner. This being a camp school (school being the key word), there were no corkscrews because you wouldn't serve wine to the kids having their meals. 

    My son-in-law Zach, being a tool guy and being quite observant, remembered there was a drill and a screw sitting some place out in the wedding area. He was clever enough to figure out that he could drill the screw into the cork and then reverse the drill and pull it out. 

    Off he went, got the drill and the screw and saved the day. Voila, we had wine.Too bad my daughter was looking down when I snapped this photo. 😏

     My other drink was something I tried before dinner while the couple was taking all their wedding photos.  I'd never heard of a Finnish Long Drink, but the peach flavor was amazing. I looked  it up when I got home from the wedding, and the Finnish name for this drink is Ionkero. 

    I thought there was a good story behind this drink too. Here's the short little AI write up about it that I found when I Googled it.

A Finnish Long Drink, or lonkero, is a popular alcoholic beverage traditionally made with gin and grapefruit soda and served chilled over ice. It was created for the 1952 Helsinki Olympics to be a refreshing, easy-to-serve drink for tourists. The beverage is characterized by its crisp, bubbly, lightly sweet, and citrusy flavor, with the taste of gin being subtle. 

    I especially liked that this drink  is  Finnish because  one of my grandfather's came from Finland. If you're wondering about the peach flavor (and later I had a pineapple one), I read these are new flavors added.  I'm curious if these  drink flavors  or even if this drink is available in Finland.  

    That's all for me. Have a super T day and week ahead.