Kevin the Cat steals our hearts while we try to steal this leprechaun's gold. Everyone is a little Irish this St. Patrick's Day!
The saying goes that "everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day" and nowhere is this statement more true than in South Bend. With the prevalence of The University of Notre Dame and their trademark of "The Fighting Irish," Irish roots obviously run deep in this city. Events are held through the week leading up to the holiday and continue throughout the entire weekend. Excluding the original French inhabitants of this area, the Irish and Polish were the two largest groups of European settlers to this area. A place known for not letting even the most mundane of traditions fade into obscurity, South Bend takes these cultural holidays seriously. Having lived in a handful of states already in our first 30-something years of life, both of us love to embrace traditions and holidays no matter where we live. Whether we're in California, traveling in out of country, living in Ohio, or back here in Indiana we've loved being those cheesy people who always dress up to celebrate holidays. The fun holidays here that are pretty unique are seemingly all contained within and around the Lent/ Easter season and are usually Polish or Irish: Pazcki Day, Dyngus Day, and of course St. Patrick's Day!
South Bend's close proximity the Chicago has led to its status as a "sister city" and allows for many scaled back attempts to emulate the celebrations seen in Chicago. One such event that will be happening this Saturday is the Greening of the St. Joe River. The city dumps a large amount of fluorescent green liquid into the river in celebration of Irish heritage. The liquid is nontoxic and regularly used as a tool for detecting leaks in water management system (for those environmentally conscious readers). Below you can see the very brief timelapse from last year's event that showcases the large crowd in attendance of the 5 or so minute event.
We hope you enjoyed our ridiculous photo of Kevin the cat and that you have a fantastic St. Patrick's Day if you plan to do anything! It looks like we'll be in Illinois at a work event next Wednesday, but we'll still be posting our Weekly Wednesday blog post as always! We've been working on albums and other product designs for client orders this week and we're SO excited about wedding season returning! A large portion of our weddings will be at the Basilica this year, we've already worked with a portion of our wedding clients (and are so excited for them!), and have continued booking 2018 weddings! We're just so excited about the next couple years and filling up the calendar with such quality people that we genuinely love being around! Life can be stressful and difficult at times, but if you get to spend some genuinely nice time around people who are kind while doing what you love... what else could you want?! Next week we'll be writing more about weddings in general, but for now have a great week!