Mr. Connell turns 28 years old!

How do you really celebrate and love on someone you love so much? You get creative.... Umm, perfect idea - a *SURPRISE* party! How do I pull off a great surprise party?! With lots of help. But I had no idea where to start. It wasn't until Chris called me roughly three weeks ago to ask if we could celebrate his birthday the Saturday before with just the two of us. He wanted to visit the very restaurant we went to on our first date. A perfect, little restaurant called Smoky's, set in the historic town of Dandridge. That was it! We would have a perfectly quiet dinner for two - I just happened to invite 30 of his closest friends and family!! Chris deserved it.

Luckily, the restaurant had a "Gathering room" that provided a great atmosphere for the event. It was cozy, quaint, and intimate. Just perfect!




Chris loves to surprise me and rarely can I pull a surprise over on him. He actually classifies me and Katie, his sister, as the worst "surprisers" ever! I just get so excited that I spill the beans. This time, however, was going to be different. Chris Connell was actually going to get a surprise party!


Throwing a great surprise party dinner required a few things: 1. People 2. Cake 3. Decorations. Beth helped me pick an evite to send to people. (Evite = online invitation sent to everyone's emails.) Within days, we had several people respond that they would be there! Here we go! It was really happening now. We had people coming!!


On to the decor! A cake - which may be the biggest part of the whole birthday! Who to do it... I searched far and wide until I found her - Lindsay Mizell. Baker extraordinaire. Thankfully, I found her before I was forced to call Food City or Ingles and beg them to make me a cake. Not that Food City or Ingles don't make good cakes - I just knew it wouldn't be the rockstar quality that I was looking for in regards to creativity. Here's what Lindsay created:




The cake in itself created quite the drama in getting it to the party. My mom, sister, grandmother, aunt, and I had been to a baby shower Saturday morning. The plan was to pick up the cake on our way home, right before they dropped me off with Chris. Three speed bumps later, I wasn't sure about leaving this cake I had just paid dearly for. I just knew the ride home would be disasterous! My whole family laughed hysterically every time we would hit a bump. I would throw my hand to my chest or throat and just pray it was okay! Thankfully, I have the best, most helpful family in the world though and that lovely, beautiful, delicious cake made it to the party! Thanks to the one and only sister BETH and her assistant Abby! Beth even went to Ingles and picked up the 28 balloons. That is a feat. But she did it with grace, I'm sure. Beth and Abby even put up the name tags I created for everyone and lit all the candles sitting on the tables. I thought the whole event looked beautiful. It would not have happened the way it did without them.


Here you go. The guest of honor. The birthday boy (and me!) at his party. He is so handsome.



[Please note, my swollen eye. My contacts were out of control that day and somehow my eye swelled up. Chris offered to take me by my house on the way - what he didn't know what I had already contacted my sister to bring my lovely glasses to the party.]


More dinner partiers:

This is only part 1 of this birthday blog. I will add more pictures of more beautiful people soon. I'll also add more details to this party and more details on Mr. Chris Connell. Stay tuned.