Weddingbee boards

Well I'm married at least. But when you think of your wedding, it shouldn't bring you to tears...

I spent a year, nearly everyday, nearly every weekend making everything by hand. I'm good at this. I was in my element. I hand made boxes for favors, and kusudama balls with glitter for over the dance floor (832 peices of paper). I made banners for the cake, gift, food, and booze tables, I made lanterns for the tables, and grew my own flowers in flower boxes my dad made for the center peices. I even hand etched 100 glasses that had our names and the date, and every guests name on their own glass they could take home, and drink umbrellas so everyone could tell which glass was their own. anyways. you get the picture. I was a hard working bride that had every detail covered, i was organized, and knew what i wanted from start to finish.

All week we had been setting up for the wedding, we had tents for the rain, and heaters for teh snow (i live north.. you never know... ) we had just about everything done, the tables were out, the dance floor levelled out on the grass, even the sound system set up and running. We had a busy week, but it was all ready for the wedding, and all we had to do was set the tables and finish the decorations. We were going to be able to visit with family, and welcome everyone arriving that day that I had not seen yet.

8:00 am, I get up have and have a lazy morning. We planned the wedding for the evening (thank god) so i had time to wonder and just be lazy...

8:30 am... 80-100k winds blow one of the tents against then over the house, burst the joints, and poles... it's unsalvagable. completely destroyed. It took the sound system with it. My father was there and my uncle, they tried to catch it. it took my uncle with it and he was injured, adn my father got a rope up his face and accross his eye leaving him with a black eye, that was red and puffy.. and really swollen.

Dispite this my father and uncle worked tirelessly against the wind to try and erect walls to guard guests against the wind and dust it was bringing up... most fail. the wind was enough to ripped through the tent walls. They managed to secure the other 2 tents, although they suffered horrible damage (they were our own) and all the frames are bend, that's how bad it was out there.

I was still unaware of this, no one wanted to worry me yet. When i showed up, everyone was freaking out and my mom took one look at me and just started bawling. Her baby girls day was falling apart everywhere we looked.  I kept going hoping we could salvage any of it, and praying the wind would die down in a few hours. well that didn't happen. we saved a few decorations with duct tape, and the rest sat in boxes. A years work totally wasted. The cake lady (whom I had had soem problems with) threw a fit because she coudln't set the cake up, she wanted to set a cupcake stand up out there. Because and I quote "i'm the ONLY ONE that touches the cake" (we had this discussion a few days prior) my mom politely asked her to show my aunts what do to so they could do it when the wind died down, she apperantly (i wasn't there) threw a fit and stormed off, leaving everything in a lump on the table, and the cake stand in a box...

We had dinner at 7, guests were freezing, without the tent the heaters coudln't stay on. People tried not to complain, but we knew everyone was miserable. It was too windy to have the ceremony, and everything was already running so late because we tried to wait until the last second to put it out to see what we coudl put out. I went to get my hair done.. there was really no point. we laqured it up, put it up (which i was SOOO against, i grew my hair out for ever to wear it down) and my hairdresser was a guest at teh wedding, and she tried to salvage what she could of it before the ceremony. The guests (mostly grandparents) were getting awful, specially on my hubby's side, and starting to really get out right bitchy because of the cold wind, and we had to do teh ceremony like right then. it was 11 pm, the wind was still howling. I went to put my dress on, and get ready. I was exhausted, and emotionally spent already, my dad walked me down the aisle with a black eye. my hair was a frizzy mess, guests were cold, and my poor mom hardly had time to get ready.

We had the ceremony, while we were gettign ready, we closed up the tents hiding the beautiful backdrop we had planned on. we were supposed to have it at sunset about 8 pm, by 11 it was so dark the judge coudln't even see what he was reading, and we had to do it between gusts of wind. the video is unaudible, and we are trying to fix teh photos we can. right after the ceremony, most of the guests left. Thankfully soon after the wind died down abotu midnight, and we were able to have a small party with those still around. It helped make it a good end to a horrible day.

Things I learned... expect the unexpected... take long deep breaths, and cry later, cause you don't have time on your wedding day... we planned for everythign we coudl think of. even some wind.. we were fine in the 40-50K winds the day before. ..no one had ever remembered wind like that during the summer, we get wind storms when we have blizzards during the winter, but never the summer. In the end was is a total disaster, yes, but we made the best of it. Did I have a breakdown... yes.. but privatly when my bestie called from australia. I'm still heartbroken with the whole event, I've never worked so hard on something in my life, and all my effort was just thrown out of the window.. or took off with the wind..

Oh well.. it's over now. The memories are bitter sweet, maybe soon I'll be able to look back on it and laugh. It's been dubbed the Category 1 wedding (meaning the winds were equivelent of a category 1 hurricane).

you guys are all so sweet, I'm hoping we can get some pictures taken just to 2 of us, nice ones :)

@flaming red... it would be VERY VERY rare for us to get snow in july, but it's not unheard of. my mom got married on june 6th, it snowed the next day.

@snmcdowell ya I'm just avoiding the boxes, i don't think it would be as bad if I didn't make them all myself. I'm hoping we can find a use for them :)

@Mrs Moose I was think maybe in 5 years. Just based on the cost. but it would be nice to do a renew, mostly the way it was planned. :) some stuff got totally destroyed so that's too bad

@Baileyh Oh no! being to hot is horrible, hopefully your dress wasn't too heavy!! I would have a word with teh venue about that!! did you get married in Vancouver?

everyone that asked. I live in Fort St. John, BC. It's abotu a 15-17 hour drive north of vancouver near the Alberta border. Think of prince george and keep driving... We got married here in my mom's backyard