After Wednesday’s full evening of preparations and last-minute paper crafts, Thursday morning we all awoke to a delicious homemade breakfast by Momma Farmer and some tasty, perfectly balanced coffee via our new French press.
It was a productive day! Philip and I got our marriage license. (Which miraculously took only 10 minutes.)
Picked up some flip-flops for the beach. Bought a few last-minute gifts. Started packing for the honeymoon.
And one by one, my beautiful bridesmaids began arriving for the evening’s festivities!
As Megan and MOH Jill began hanging up the clothesline for “panties on parade”, I told Dad and Philip they may want to pack up and head out for the evening. It was starting to get VERY girly in there and I had no clue what else my girls had up their sleeves.
The guys stayed at Philip’s parents home for the evening.
Our first stop for the evening was Arrington Vineyards, which is just outside of Franklin, TN, out in the country. It’s a beautiful winery owned by Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn fame. (Sorry gals. No Kix sightings that night.)

(Here I am with a few of my lovely bachelorette gal pals…and my beautiful mother!)

(And here I am donning my lovely bride-to-be sash from the bridesmaids. )
See gals. I was smart about this. There wasn’t much they could do to embarrass me way out here in the sticks. (Not that I don’t trust my bridesmaids and gal pals. I TOTALLY DO.) I’ve heard about some horribly embarrassing bachelorette events involving t-shirts and lifesavers, dares with bar-goers and so on. Thankfully they know that’s not my thing, so I really wasn’t in fear of being terribly embarrassed.
Arrington was a superb location for the vibe I was going for. As my guests arrived, clusters of 3-4 girls stepped inside for the wine tasting. Once everyone completed the tasting, we stepped back out to the large covered porch and enjoyed a delightful dinner together. We had beautiful weather and blue skies as far as you could see with a sun that was slowly setting behind the trees. During dinner, we played TableTopics…which was a brilliant move on behalf of MOH Jill. Many of my guests didn’t know each other, so this gave everyone the chance to get more connected and have a central topic to discuss.
Once our delicious dinner and discussions were finished, we snapped a few photos:


I opened a few gifts from the gals who couldn’t come to round 2 of our evening.

Then we took a group photo and packed up to head to our second destination for the night’s bachelorette events – our home.

Thanks to all my beautiful gal pals who joined us for a lovely evening at the vineyard!
The rest of the evening’s events will be saved for tomorrow’s blog post – Wedding Week/end, part 2.5.













