Member- Goofball
- 4 years ago
- Wedding: September 2013
We were engaged in February and married in September in an intimate yet elegant ceremony witnessed by 35 of our nearest and dearest and had an absolutely amazing day! Despite planning the wedding for 7 months, most everything went out the window in the two weeks (if not the hours) before the wedding. Which, quite frankly, leads me to believe most weddings can be planned in 2 weeks! So here’s my (long) story, but I know most of y’all will skip over it to the pics anyways. 🙂
We ordered the catering 7 DAYS before the wedding. I hated all the caterers I talked/met with. There was no way in hell we were going to pay $100 pp for canned olives and dry chicken! I had caterers tell me I HAD to have a green salad (i.e. wilted iceberg with a slice of semi-ripe greenhouse tomato and choice of ranch or italian dressing), that if we wanted fish we HAD to have Salmon for the number of guests that we had, that at our price point ($100 pp mind you!) that we could do a buffet with PAPER PLATES! So then I remember we have a fabulous hometown grocery store, Wegmans! I worried, was it TACKY to have a grocery store cater our wedding? But, it wasn’t just any grocery store, it was WEGMANS! They have top notch chefs on their staff, we could have ANYTHING we wanted, and the food was amazing! We had sushi, humus with organic fresh baked bread, fresh/local oven roasted veggies, fresh fruit platters, international cheese platter (not a slice of rubbery fake orange cheddar cheese in site), halibut (a recipe their chef and fish expert created just for our wedding!), roast beef, antipasto…all top notch, high quality ingredients. Totally not your typical wedding fare.
I found Jay (um…I don’t know his last name, but he was fabulous, has even played Caregie Hall), the pianist 22 HOURS before the wedding. Darling Husband 7:30 the night before insisted that we HAD to have one since the venue had a Steinway, it took me less than an hour to find one. SIL sang Cat Power’s “Sea of Love.” She was planning on doing it acapella so we didn’t have any sheet music, but she said text him a link to the video and if he’s any kind of musician he’ll get it. 3 minutes later he texts me back “got it.” I have no idea what song I walked down the aisle to! I had been planning to have the DJ play “Here Comes the Sun” (Beatles!) but since we now had Jay I sent my two MOH’s down 1/2 HOUR BEFORE THE CEREMONY to talk to him when he got there and they picked out something lovely. I had also told them 2 HOURS BEFORE that they needed to grab the Bridesmaid or Best Man & BW and do a rehearsal run through and decide where everybody should be standing. I figured by the time I walked down the aisle everybody else would already be there and I’d figure out where I needed to be. They also had to decide which one of them would stand next to me, hold my bouquet, sign the license, and whatever else needed to be done as I didn’t want to choose between them.
SIL practicing with Jay:
Darling Husband decided 2 DAYS before the wedding we needed MORE flowers. I had ordered 165 stems of Calla Lilies and Roses from Sam’s Club. The roses arrived on Thursday but the Calla’s were delayed due to bad weather and sat an extra day in a (hot) airport hangar but arrived mostly unharmed. Darling Husband wanted more flowers, so Friday I went off to purchase another 200 stems from Wegmans. I had all the arrangements done by Friday night, but then…THE DAY BEFORE Darling Husband decided we needed MORE and called the caterer to add another additional 100 stems. (All yellow and red…..there goes the color story!) He thought our dad’s could just pick them up the morning of the wedding and “throw them in some vases.” Um yea…no. So I picked them up the night before, swung by a couple of thrift stores for more milk glass vases and put together more arrangements! At this point I was ready to finish the bouquets we’d be carrying and the guys boutonnieres and head off to the hotel (where one of my MOH’s was going to spend the night with me and we’d get ready at in the morning). But instead Darling Husband decided we needed a pianist and I told him he’d have to choose, bouquets or pianist…we got Jay. The original plan was simple 3 rose nosegay bouquets for the girls and a small 10-12 rose bouquet for myself. I ended up not making any of the bouquets, BUT had a beautiful one with lilies made for me by the mom of one of my MOH’s 4 HOURS BEFORE THE CEREMONY. She also made 3 additional bouquets for the 2 MOH’s and the BW (Best Woman) and boutineres for Darling Husband and the BM! I’m so blessed to have such wonderful people in my life!!!
One of my MOH’s discovered that her dress wasn’t fitting quite right, so she found a new one THE NIGHT BEFORE. There was a general color theme (reds/corals/pinks) for the dresses, but the girls picked out what they wanted. Despite the last minute change I think she looked beautiful in her new red dress. I kind of liked it better than her original pink one! (In the pic below my MOH’s and I are trying to figure out how Darling Husband and his BW & Bridesmaid or Best Man had obviously gotten champagne before pictures and we hadn’t!)
Darling Husband was supposed to finish ironing the linens, luckily he has three sisters and his mom, so I don’t think he actually had to iron anything! None of the colored linens (tablecloths, runners, colored napkins for bread bowls) made it to the venue. (DH swears it was by accident and not part of a last minute scheme to switch up the color story despite ordering a bunch of yellow flowers at the last minute…I of course believe him). Our venue was gorgeous so they weren’t really missed. The pink chair covers made it though!
We had asked one of my SIL’s to do a reading at the wedding…and then totally spaced on giving her a copy! Luckily our officiant had a copy. So the first time she saw it was DURING THE CEREMONY as she was reading it. She totally rocked it!!!! One of my favorite parts of ceremony was the guest affirmation, the officiant asked everyone present if they would support our marriage, it was so overwhelmingly awesome to hear everyone in unison respond WE WILL!
So many things that we had spent months planning fell by the wayside but in the end I married a wonderful man surrounded by people we love (and who love us!)
So a few more pics…just because I can! 🙂
