Big Wedding News in Salado

There’s big wedding news here in Salado. The whole town is buzzing! It made the evening news last night. The streets were lined with tourists and residents alike straining for a peek. But weddings aren’t anything new here, especially for a wedding wonderland like Inn on the Creek. Hmmm…

Salado, my home town, is the preferred destination for brides all across the country. Weddings are big business here. Florists, wedding planners, B&Bs, photographers…we’ve got it all in this cozy little village. How lucky am to be a resident of this lovely jewel in the heart of Central Texas AND to be a bride.

And Inn on the Creek is THE hot spot for weddings. You can get married on the lawn, have cocktails on the sweeping porch overlooking the creek and then a private dinner in the small dining room for 12 or in the larger dining room for 25. Then the couple can make their way up three flights of stairs to the preferred bridal suite, the McKie Room

It is a beautiful spot and for two days, it was my chosen location. But for reasons I’ll disclose in another posting (reasons that will be obvious to people who know my taste and see these pictures) we have made other arrangements which I’ll also disclose later.

So even though I won’t be getting married at Inn on the Creek, it is still amusing that my initial wedding site was the chosen location for the Jenna Bush bridesmaid luncheon yesterday. (Did you really think that the big wedding buzz was about MY wedding?)

We see lots of weddings and pre-wedding parties in this town, but oh what fanfare we can put on when it involves the President’s daughter. Never mind that this was to be a secret affair. I knew the cat was out of the bag when I drove into town and saw the flags lining the streets two weeks ahead of Memorial Day! For an artsy little shopper’s paradise, a visit from the first Daughter, first lady, former first lady (first mother?) and later the President himself, was news

And BIG news it was – over 1,200 google hits for “Salado Jenna Bush” including an AP article that had this to say:

Early in the day, the three attended a bridal lunch for family and friends at an inn in Salado, more than an hour’s drive south of Crawford. They stayed the day in the small tourist village, founded before the Civil War, getting ready for the evening events. The president made his way solo to Salado.

There the parents of the groom, Henry Hager, hosted the rehearsal dinner for members of the family and the wedding party at the Old Salado Springs Celebration Center in the heart of the town filled with coffee shops, western-style stores, antiques, eateries and clothing shops.

Then later, all of the wedding guests, some just arriving in the area, were invited to what was billed a “Texas-sized celebration” at the Salado Silver Spur Theater in the village, once a stagecoach stop.

Well, my wedding won’t be such big news here in town even though my parents are local celebrities and the oldest white settler of Salado was a Willingham (no relation, but still…). But the wedding will still be a perfectly lovely occassion, I’m sure. Like Jenna, I’m getting married in Central Texas in my parent’s back yard, albeit a much smaller back yard than the Western White House. And it will be a smaller crowd – eight family members, two couple friends and the bride and groom.

No time to fill you in on the wedding plans now. I’m to busy with the doing! But I promise to write more later when I’m not rushing to the post office to mail Terry his new cell phone.