I think I made you wait long enough...
Thank you so much for all your sweet words!
The Friday and Saturday before the wedding were a comedy of errors. Some of it felt like tragedy at the time. By Saturday night, I had a bad migraine, and I was exhausted.
We had the best men and matrons of honor over, as well a few other friends. We ordered Chinese food, took a walk in the park behind our house (Mine Falls is a deceptively large park. Most people think it's tiny and are shocked at how much acreage there is), and then we played Apples to Apples.
I think Rob and I got to bed around eleven. He kept talking about how he wasn't going to get to sleep. I felt so tired, so I thought I'd be out quickly.
Once I crawled into bed, that was that. I laid there. For hours. My mind wasn't racing. It was blank. But I could not sleep. Rob fell asleep, of course.
By the time I fell asleep, it was around three.
I woke up two hours later.
I got up and worked out (I have an elliptical) for about an hour. Put a mask on (Jaqua Pumpkin Papaya!). Put my dress back in its bag (it was hanging in the basement, all spread out). Then I checked in our flight with Southwest. Took a long preparatory shower (my showers are usually seven minutes... this was more like fifteen or twenty, so it was long for me). Dried my hair, no make-up (not even my precious lipstick). Got dressed.
When I tried to pack the car, I had a rough time, because I had the "Jen box" (this had all my necessities in it... veil, jewelry, socks, sixpence, etc., etc.), the bouquets, the boutonnieres (which I was supposed to leave for Rob, but it would have gotten screwed up either way), shoe box, the dress, a Dr. Pepper (of course!)... I needed more arms than Shiva. Rob did come and help me, but I felt like I was running late (I wanted to leave at 7:30 and didn't end up leaving until around 7:40 for my 8:00 make-up appointment).
While I drove, I tried to sing the songs I had on a CD playing. Every time I tried, I started to tear up. I kept thinking, Oh my god. It's today. It's today. I'm getting married today. Oh my god.
I got to the make-up place at 7:55. I'm not used to no traffic. It was early Sunday morning, so every road was dead.
The make-up artist was there and ready.
Little did I know that this is where my timeline began to completely unravel.
She told me she only needed about twenty minutes per person.
At 8:30, Sara and Tamara arrived, and she still wasn't done.
By 8:50, I was finished, and I opted at the last minute to pay for everyone's make-up. I wasn't planning on it, but... I don't know, it felt right. So I paid for all that, and the make-up artist gave me a hug and insisted I email her pictures. She seemed really fond of me (she wouldn't stop going on about my dress), and that was nice.
Funny anecdote (okay, not really funny, but ironic). The song I chose for my father/daughter dance was Everything I Do by Bryan Adams (sentimental history reasons). I haven't heard that song in years. It played that morning at the salon.
I was a little surprised by my make-up. Since I opted not to do the mascara, she used two types of eyeliner. She used the regular pencil and then a cream, so I had the 1960s look. My eyes were very darkly lined (on the top). It looked like I should be wearing white lipstick.
I kept looking at Sara and Tamara for votes of approval. They both said I looked nice. God, I hope they meant it. It was like I liked it. If it had been on someone else!
I rushed out of there, because I was supposed to be at JC Penney (in another town) at 9:00. My photographer was also supposed to meet me then, so I didn't want to be late.
Again, trying to sing. Starting to cry. Oh my god. Oh my god. Getting married. Need to be punctual. Oh my god. Getting married. Wonder if Rob got his cards (great internal monologue, huh? I hid a card in Rob's suit jacket pocket... he had wanted to try it on the day before, and I yelled, No!!... also took the pair of boxers he was wearing that day and put them in the bathroom with another card. They both promised him I'd be there, walking toward him in a few hours. I don't know if he was nervous I was going to back out, but I knew various people around us (my parents, coworkers) thought I might back out, and I wanted to reassure him.
I got to JC Penney at 9:05, and found my hair dresser wasn't there.
The place was open, and people were waiting, but no Ashley. This gave me an opportunity to spray Model in a Bottle all over my face (I tried that when I was driving the last time... not wise). This also gave me a chance to see how scary I looked in make-up. The lights at the salon were soft and dark. The lights at JC Penney were bright, bright, bright. I thought I looked like a freak show, but I kept reassuring myself that it wouldn't show in pictures (it did, but not as badly as I could see it in the mirror).
My photographer appeared a couple minutes later, and this was the first time we were meeting in person, so we talked for a little bit. I could see she had a very strong personality, and I was a little nervous. She talked about how she hated people being late. She had just told me she was waiting for ten minutes or so, so I thought she was trying to tell me she hated me.
Ashley appeared at 9:20. Calm, smiley, not seemingly aware that she was twenty minutes late. Then the hair dressers that were supposed to do Sara and Tamara's hair showed up, and they weren't too happy that they showed up on a Sunday only to find their customers weren't there.
By ten, the girls still hadn't arrived, and I had no clue when my hair was going to be done. My photographer (Laura) had left already to get reception hall shots and get the lay of the land.
At around quarter past, I heard, "We're the missing bridesmaids!" Ah, my ladies.
They had both walked in thinking that they'd get their hair blown out, maybe some straightening. Unfortunately, the girls doing their hair had different ideas. One of them came over to me and asked me how much time she had and what I wanted. I said, "We're already going to be late, so just do what you gotta do."
I guess maybe I should have said, Do what the girls WANT you to do. Because they were insistent on really styling and up-doing their hair. Considering we had forty-five minutes before the wedding, and neither of them are crazy about girlie hair, I don't think any of us were pleased with the situation, but we didn't feel like we had any control either.
Ashley finished after 10:30. She had told me she'd only need an hour. I guess that was an hour and ten minutes, but it just seemed longer. Maybe because my Special K bar and Dr. Pepper were sitting in the car, and I usually eat/drink those by 10am on weekdays.
Tamara had originally wanted me to stay and have us caravan together over to Alpine Grove, but considering the time, I knew I had to leave. I still needed to cut the flower stems (oh, I didn't mention... the ribbons were white and were supposed to be ivory... it was an eyesore. There were big bows inserted into each of them. We took them out the night before, so it wouldn't be so noticeable... good move!) and get dressed.
I went over to them and said, I'm leaving. They wanted me to do a little twirl for them to see my hair and veil. It didn't end up being as nice as my trial, which sucks, but what can you do? It lacked the hairspray and bobby pins, and after an unfortunate hug from my aunt, the bottom of my 'do quickly unraveled before the wedding.
I was in my car driving at 10:40. So that means at around 10:38, I was shoving a Special K bar down my throat and chugging half my can of Berries and Cream Diet Dr. Pepper. God, did I feel much better after that. At least more human.
This time, I didn't have time to sing. I immediately dialed my mom's cell phone. My dad answered, and I told him that I was on my way there (I told everyone I'd be there by 10:30, so I wasn't too late), and that I needed someone to meet me in the parking lot to help me carry stuff inside. My dad told me he'd enlist my brothers to help and they'd meet me outside when I got there.
Of course, I was stuck behind a slow person on the last leg.
It did give me a chance (in between stewing and mentally freaking out about time) to notice trees were starting to change (yay fall!)
I pulled into Alpine Grove, and I instantly became calm (complete reverse of how I felt before the rehearsal). It was like, okay, I know now I'm on time, even if nothing else is. Actually, it was more like, I reached my final destination, no more worrying about going places.
I saw people walking around, and I saw a lot of cars. I don't know if they were all for our wedding. I didn't wear glasses there because I was trying to keep my make-up in tact (even Model in a Bottle doesn't protect 100% from glasses), so I couldn't see exactly who I was looking at.
I decided to pull right up to the building and leave the car running before to drop off stuff and then park.
My brothers and dad came right out. Tamara's husband, Chris, was already out, and he came right over too. I jumped out of the car and started to see people, including some coworkers who tapped on their watches to make me aware that I was late (like I wasn't hyper aware of that already).
I pulled out the box of flowers/corsages and gave them to Chris and told him which ones were whose. Then Brendon, one of Rob's best men came over. I instantly noticed that his boutonniere was actually one of the leaves we had put on the tables for decorations with some baby's breath. I immediately threw a thumb's up to him and said, That's AWESOME! The look of relief on his face was immense, which made me laugh (am I really that scary?
).
I said to him, Forgot your boutonniere at home, huh? He had, so he made that. Which, I actually, in hindsight, wish I came up with for everyone. It would have alleviated Rob's dad getting Rob's boutonniere (I keep saying I'm going to get over this; Rob keeps saying I won't. He's probably right, because I get more and more upset every time I see pictures, especially with the two of us, since his rose was supposed to be burgundy to match my dress... at least I didn't notice that day!!).
So Brendon and Chris went off with the flowers. My brother, Mike, took my wedding dress (I think) and the bouquets. My brother, Brian came over and I told him to get in the car with me. He opened the door and saw E.T. in the front seat. He said, Aww, you still have him!
I told him, No, I got this one on eBay. I wore that E.T. out years ago.
He held E.T., and I asked him where I should park. He said, It's your wedding day, you can park wherever I want. My response? I can? Yes. So he had me park right in front of the building (I still felt so guilty).
He walked me to a back door of the reception hall to make sure that Rob wasn't around. It was the weirdest thing. I guess I thought everyone would be outside, waiting, but they opened up the Pavilion (the room we were in) and let everyone go in and see where they were sitting and entertain themselves with the centerpiece baskets, which was fantastic. But it was so weird having everyone see me before hand.
I got ushered into the room, and everyone was staring at me, which was weird. My mom came and pulled me in to the bride's room. It was cold from air conditioning. Laura was there, taking all my stuff apart and putting things (shoes, E.T., etc.) together for pictures. A man in a large contraption was there. That was David, our videographer (how can one be unobtrusive when he has this huge thing wrapped around him that makes him look like borg?). I introduced myself. Then I bumped into Christine, my friend who was trying to become a photographer. It was great to finally meet her too.
Everyone was telling me I needed to get ready, but I remembered I needed to go to the bathroom, so I excused myself. It was locked. So I stood and waited. That's when my aunt accosted me with love and pulled out the bottom of my hair and most of my veil, so it's crooked in most of the early pictures.
My friend (and pet sitter), Paige, came out of the bathroom, and she whistled and said very naughty things to me about how I looked (she liked a lot
). We talked for a minute, and then I ran back to the room.
Laura, David, and Christine were going to town on my dress (window shots, draped over the table and mirror shots, etc.). My mom reminded them I needed to get ready (it had to be almost eleven, the time the ceremony was supposed to start, by then... still no Sara and Tamara... just a lot of, Where are the bridesmaids? Where are the bridesmaids?). So David left, and my mom tried to help me get in my dress. Laura cut the bouquet stems (thank you, thank you!), and Christine took pictures.
Then Sharon, the wedding coordinator came in. Neither Sharon nor my mom were very well-versed in corsetry. Sharon has nails that are almost (if not) an inch long, so she couldn't really do too much. But they tried. And failed. And then tried again. They all said that my dress needed to stay loose or the corset would overlap. Laura took a picture of how it looked to show me, and I said it was fine (of course, now you can see pictures that the top looked a bit too loose, and my dress was too long, which meant the straps were not aligned the way they were when it was altered, which meant the dress wasn't tied as tightly... but I will admit, it was nice to be able to breathe!). I just wanted to be able to stand and not feel like I was going to fall over like a house of cards!
At some point, Tamara and Sara arrived (it had to have been around 11:30 - 11:45... yeah, egads). Tamara asked if there was some place they could get undressed without everyone looking at them. I told them to go behind the curtain (there was a curtain on the wall in the room). I was partially joking, but I think Laura and my mother both thought that was a good idea. I don't think they did. But they did get dressed (not sure how, though). We were all looking at my side of the room for picture stuff, so we weren't watching them.
There are actually a lot of pictures from this time that are funny. One of my pants around my ankles with my dress on (it looks like I'm walking around on my knees or just really short). Me showing off my legs, trying to put on my thigh highs.
I'm going to try and continue a little bit right now, as the system is going to be down for a half-hour (and hope no one bothers me in the interim).
You'll find the images that I include from my website are going to have the borders and flourish at the bottom, because if I included the originals, my post would never load.
Christine tried to take pictures of the "details" (read: everything I brought with me). Here was a close-up shot of my bouquet.
All of our bouquets piled together. My bouquet was mostly burgundy roses with a few orange-y ones. The girls had mostly orange-y with a few burgundy.
David, Laura, and Christine had taken my shoes out and organized everything so artfully.
You can see the blaring white from the bouquets. I'm really glad I opted to take the ribbons out. You couldn't really see the wrapped ribbons, since we were holding them.
This is one of *many* guest appearances from E.T.
This is a perfect picture of Tamara (one of many as well).
After the trial it took to get me dressed, we got to more important worries! If you've been following along since the beginning, you know that I desperately wanted a dress full of flowers (a la Atelier Aimee). I wanted color, flowers, no beading, organza, no satin.
Well, um, one out of five ain't bad!
When I realized I ordered a dress with no flowers, this really bothered me. I wanted flowers
somewhere. I know my hair comb had them, but I wanted three-dimensional flowers. Flowers that popped!
I ordered a bunch of flowers off eBay. You already know about one of them, the one that landed on my bow on the sash (it took me a half-hour to get it back on the dress the way I wanted it the day before... good thing I had the foresight to know I'd be too busy on wedding day and decided to do it early!). Most of the flowers I ordered off eBay were too shocking in color or just didn't go, even if they were beautiful.
At my fitting, I held up some of the yellow roses I had gotten, and everyone in the store nixed them, saying they didn't match. But I still held out hope Tamara would make it work.
So I took them out of the box and said, Can we do something with these? Can we put them in my pick-ups?
Tamara and Sara started looking at my dress, trying to find a place to put them.
For those of you who have already seen, you know that there was success. Tamara
totally made it work, and I think it was one of the
best parts of my dress that day. When I dropped the dress off for dry cleaning later, I was sad to take it off and made sure I could see the pin holes, so I could put it right back on. I
loved it.
We had two, and Sara and Tamara ultimately decided that one was enough, and I was okay with that. In that picture, Tamara was trying to decide if another one should go on the dress.
The photographer was getting antsy. She really wanted to get pictures of me getting ready and the formal "window" pictures. Christine caught this shot, which is one of the only ones of my corset. I really was looking forward to having a beautiful corset shot.
This one is nice, and I like the motion of it.
I had gotten into my dress with my jeans on, and then took them off after the dress was on. There are some humorous shots of me with my jeans around my ankles that I'll be sure to share with you as soon as I get them on disc (still no disc
).
Then I needed to get my thigh highs on (all I could think was, It's hard enough to go to the bathroom with this dress on... pulling pantyhose up and down is just going to make it worse... as much as thigh highs don't want to stay, I hoped these would... the garters REALLY helped).
Talk about the quintessential bride-getting-ready-shot:
That was me trying to get one of the garters on (I actually had three at this point, but only wore two, one on each leg-- they worked, I tell you! They actually held them up pretty well!).
What do you think of the cherub thigh highs?
I couldn't find anything that would match my dress (gold is different from ivory, and white is obviously strikingly different), so I said, What the heck? I'll get something more me!
I don't have any shots (from Christine) of me putting my jewelry on, but when you're *really* nervous, and you never really wear jewelry, trying to put jewelry on is difficult! I ended up having to have my mom help me with the necklace, and I eventually (it probably took ten seconds instead of the usual two, but time felt so strange that day) got the earrings on.
I was finally ready for pictures.
She kept telling me to look serious. It was hard. I wanted to laugh the whole time. My face was cracking. I felt like I was in a high school play, and everyone around me was goofing off, and I wanted to burst out laughing.
I don't know why photographers like the upside down bouquet. I wonder if it's anything like when you have an upside down flag. Am I stating I'm in a period of crisis? Do I need to get out of there? I've never understood.
I was having trouble following instruction. I think I must have driven Laura insane. I just didn't know what to do with myself. I had trouble looking serious even from the back!
I'm not sure what I was doing here. Trying to touch the trees? Trying to conjure up something mystical? Who knows? I do know I was trying desperately to listen through the closed window (and failing miserably) to hear my pre-ceremony music.
She wanted me to sit on the bench and do bride-y bench-y things. I'm apparently very bad at it. When she had me lean against the edge of the bench, I could NOT hold myself up. Seriously. I kept falling over. I was a helpless, foolish bride. You wouldn't know it from this picture.
Every time I look at it, I think I look like some sort of Greek... something. Not a goddess, but the profile of my face and hair remind me of Grecian pictures I've seen over the years. Okay, maybe some of them were from Edith Hamilton's Mythology, but I'm not comparing myself to a goddess, I swear! More like a school marm!
I love the almost "sloppy" flow of the dress. I'm sure Cam will come up with a better adjective. But I just love how it spills everywhere. It's not so much billowy. It's just... liquid-y, you know? Every picture that shows my dress, I think I tend to drool. Maybe I should have married the dress.
(I guess this shows that I did, indeed, pick "*The* ONE"... which I questioned until I saw pictures of myself in it.)
Several times, Rob's mom came in. There's a great picture of her standing before me, like she was giving me one last look of approval. It's really sweet. She was instrumental in making several of the dress decisions, and she had wanted to sew the flower on my bow to have it be more attached, so I'm not surprised she came by.
Laura took all her formal bride pictures and someone (can't remember who) said something to the effect of, "How about we go get you married?" ... something like that. And I felt like we were forgetting something, but I said okay. I realized I forgot to get a couple girlie shots of the three of us. Oops. There are no real shots of the three of us together, so now everyone will think I AM Tamara and Sara. I get mistaken for Sara quite a bit already.
Everyone left the room. At one point... not sure if it was at this time or if it was earlier, but my mom touched my cheeks and told me she was so proud of me. Which elicited the whole inner monologue of "Why are you proud of me? I'm just getting married, not getting my doctorate." I never quite got that. I smiled at her, and it was a happy moment.
When we walked out, the room was empty, except for the waitstaff. I think they told me I looked beautiful and told me not to worry about the time or how late we were running. I must have apologized to them, because I apologized to a lot of people.
We walked to the entrance of the deck, and a couple times, I actually went right out onto the deck (which I wasn't supposed to because people could turn around and see me, and it would ruin the element of surprise). I saw Rob from an odd angle (we were at a slant, so I saw him outside of all the chairs and people, instead of inside, like in the aisle), and all these people. My stomach churned repeatedly. I was pretty sure I'd fall flat on my face, as I'm a klutz, and I was wearing heels, and I can't walk in them on grass, let alone pavement (or vice versa).
I realized I wasn't holding E.T. I think part of me envisioned me carrying him with me, because that's what I did when I was a kid. I said, Oh, I don't have E.T. Sharon offered to go grab him for me. She got him, but she ended up putting him on the guest book table, so I didn't see him until after the ceremony (I survived). I sent my poor mom all over creation, though, because after the ceremony, I asked her to grab my Dr. Pepper and E.T. from the bride's room (I forgot Sharon grabbed him, because I figured she forgot to grab him). She found him on the table. But I'm getting ahead of myself now...
Everything came together in such a perfect Jen-fashion -- every little detail is exquisite and so perfectly you and NON-formulaic (I LOVE THAT!!!!)-- the cherub thigh-highs, the cat trouser socks, the yellow rose (I remember when you were on your quest for flowers -- I think I sent you a link to MJ Trim), the flower on your sash, that gorgeous jewelry comb in your hair, the mantilla veil that flowed down your back so elegantly, your hair & makeup, the mix of pix with and without your glasses . . . I could go on and on. But, mostly what I want to say is thank you for being so generous in sharing your planning journey with us and for now sharing all these gorgeous pictures with us. I know it is all very time- and energy-consuming, but we are a selfish lot here, and NEED all the details. So, thank you, sweetie. 
I even read the vows and sometimes I just skim them but yours were so meaningful and beautiful to me 
You always put so much love and down to earth-ness into your posting too, it was such a wonderful pleasure to read - AND you looked so beautiful 
I can't wait to read more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
