April 26-29, 2013
Brandon's friend from his Purdue days, Priyanka, was getting married to her long-time beau, Patrick, so that meant one thing.......
.....a road trip to Chicago!
We left on a Friday morning and stopped in Indy for lunch.
We ate at a place called Rock Bottom.
They have an a-ma-zing soft pretzel appetizer.
We arrived in a suburb of Chicago and settled into our hotel.
Upon checking in, we received a favor bag with goodies & an itinerary for the weekend's festivities. Priyanka is from India and Patrick is from the US, so they would be having two weddings in one day - an Indian ceremony and a Western ceremony. So, Saturday would be a full day!
We took it easy on Friday night after driving all day and before a busy next day.
Early Saturday, we got up and ready to attend the morning Indian ceremony. Brandon, having been to India and actually been a part of another friends wedding ceremony there, owned a Sherwani and wore it to the ceremony....while I opted for a more traditional look (I don't own any foreign duds).
Brandon's good friend, Barrett, & his main squeeze, Kara, were also attending the ceremony.....and Barrett was on the same trip to India with Brandon and had his own Sherwani too!
Aren't they too cute? And don't you just love Barrett's sparkly shoes to match? (Brandon opted not to wear his matching shoes).
The beautiful, decorated bride
Luckily for us, they had a narrator for the ceremony since it was all in another language. They also shortened the usually very lengthy ceremony down to about 45 minutes.
After the Indian ceremony, we had a few hours to kill before the Western ceremony.....so we found the nearest
Giordano's and had some awesome Chicago style deep-dish pizza!!
We just so happened to be in the same area of Chicago as the
Billy Graham Center, so after lunch, we went and toured the museum and campus of
Wheaton College where the center is located.
We arrived back with enough time to get ready for the evening Western ceremony, which took place at the hotel where we stayed.
A brief, but sweet and meaningful ceremony took place.....
....and then the newlyweds opened the dance floor.....
....while the guests blew bubbles in their direction.
Us not-so-newlyweds with the new newlyweds!
We danced the night away - and even learned some new Indian dance moves! Even though we stayed quite late, the reception was still swinging when we left.
We checked out of our suburban hotel on Sunday morning and drove to downtown Chicago and checked into another, much smaller cozier, hotel.
We set out walking and just enjoying the day
This was our first trip to Chicago as a married couple! The last time we were in Chicago was when
we got engaged!
We *LOVE* Chicago!!!
After walking around a while, we hopped on the train.....
.....and went to meet friends for lunch.
We met up with Shaun and Andreea, more friends of Brandon's (and recent newlyweds as well!) and Barrett and Kara (they had stayed in the city with Shaun and Andreea).
Shaun, Brandon and Barrett:
Mel, Andreea & Shaun, Brandon
After lunch, we ventured to a restaurant called "
Twin Anchors". Not to eat, but to see the set of my absolute favorite movie, "
Return to Me." The restaurant was the primary setting in the
movie.
Here's the outside:
(How we saw it on the left and how it looked in the movie on the right)
The restaurant is located at the corner of Sedgwick & Eugenie, but for the movie, they wanted it
to feel like it sat in the middle of a city block. So, they actually constructed a building facade to the left of the building where in real life there is a street.
Here's the inside:
(How we saw it on the left and how it looked in the movie on the right)
These are the best screenshots from the movie I could get to compare the shots I took inside the actual restaurant....although I wish I had taken them exactly at the same angle they were shot in the movie....but I think that would have been hard!
Only watchers of the movie will appreciate these next pictures.....this is the sink where Grace poured the water out of the bottle:
(How we saw it on the left and how it looked in the movie on the right)
You can also see the sink/waitress stand a bit in the picture on the right below.
These pictures are looking back in the other direction towards the door of the restaurant:
(How we saw it on the left and how it looked in the movie on the right)
It was SO FUN for me to go to the restaurant/set! I LOVE that movie and it was a bit of tangible Hollywood. :)
After exploring the restaurant a bit, we ventured over
Navy Pier.
It had turned into a very foggy afternoon by the lake.....
.....but we had previously scheduled an architectural boat tour and - foggy or not - we had already paid for it, so whether we could see anything or not, we were going.
The fog seemed to get lower and lower....
.....and we really wondered if we'd wasted out money!
But, as we came in off the lake and got closer to the buildings.....
.....the fog started lifting and we could see buildings!
Here are some of my favorite shots of the tour:
The building had several "attachments" from other historical sites around the world.
Including one from Kentucky!
That handsomely cute thing standing there on that bridge....that's my Hubby!!
Something we had seen in Europe was people
"locking" their love by placing locks onto a bridge railing. I hadn't seen it in the US before, but apparently it's catching on here too. We saw a few locks on the bridge....including this one that made us laugh. "Cleetus John & Puggsly Pooh"
After roaming around Chicago a while, we had dinner at Uno's - the same place we ate the night
we got engaged.
And we had Strawberry Shortcake like we did, you guessed it, the night
we got engaged!
Can you tell I was being
uber-nostalgic about being in Chicago and going to all the places we had gone when
we got engaged? Brandon was such a trooper as I tried to recreate that evening! I'm just too sentimental sometimes! And it was just so special to be back at all those places.
The next morning, Monday morning, we stopped in a couple stores before hitting the road back to KY. We visited the American Girl Doll Store first. I snapped a couple pictures and picked up a couple catalogs for my nieces - they LOVE American Girl Dolls.
One really neat part of the store was a "Doll Hair Salon" where girls can get their doll's hair done - cute, huh? If you look really closely, you can see little pink beautician chairs along the top of that counter for the dolls to sit in.
Right next door to the AG Doll Store was the Lego store.
My nephew LOVES Legos and we grabbed him a catalog in there too.
By day he's Brandon, by night - Batman?
What a fun-filled, jam-packed long weekend we had in Chicago - from watching Pri & Pat get married twice, to visiting with good friends to exploring the city and re-living favorite memories! Thanks Chicago! Until next time.....
