Nobody creates a "sense of place" the way my fellow creative entrepreneur friend Nadine and her husband Caleb do. From their adorably quaint A-frame house under the canopy of East Texas piney woods that they patiently restored by-hand, filled with artifacts of their personal histories and fascinations, and now host book clubs and dinner parties out of, to the swampy harvest moon wedding weekend they thoughtfully planned out for their friends and family to enjoy, these two have a knack for community-building and folktale-ery. We're talking hand-written vintage postcard notes to every guest, and welcome kits that included maps of cute stuff to do around the city. The festivities kicked off in Houston with everybody piling into packed cars to road trip across the Louisiana border, over the swamps and bayous under the nearly-full harvest moon into beloved New Orleans for a weekend to remember. As a little nod to Nadine's personal obsession with monarch butterflies (she's an active conservationist, planting and protecting their host plant, milkweed, to create local wildlife corridors for the population's stops along their migration path) I included some just-opened milkweed pods in her bouquet, so that as she walked the city sidewalks from the gorgeous deconsecrated cathedral at Hotel Peter & Paul, the wind would catch the downy seeds, and potentially plant additional habitats for the winged creatures she adores so much that she has them tattooed across her collar bones. Here's to my favorite naturalist cowgirl swamp queen, the oral storyteller Renaissance man of her dreams, and the Zydeco playlist they co-curated to set the tone for an evening of good food, good drink, good friends, and, naturally, a hankie-waving, jazz-playing second line parade at the end of the night.
