Member- Bebealways
- 4 years ago
- Wedding: August 2013
…yes I do, I totally earned it, I got married on Friday and it was AWESOME and even my HUSBAND (TEEHEE at that word) totally admits most of the awesomeness was my good planning/ideas. (Though I had a lot of good people executing them and a lot of good luck so I can’t really take credit for everything.)
We got into the US on the 1st and spent some time with my family. It was weird at first because my mom has some issues that stop her from getting everything done that she wants to sometimes, so the room we normally stay in was full of stuff and we stayed in my uncle’s camper outside for a couple days.
We are not camping people… at all… so I got fed up and helped her clean up and make the room usable so we could sleep indoors like civilized people. ;D
We did all our wedding prep, I dyed my hair only thanks to my awesome mom FINDING the dye for me that I had lost.
Got into our wedding city a couple days before and ran errands and ate a wawa hoagie for the first time in 2 years (it was amazing.) Hotel beds = stellar. Staff a little less so but eh, whatever. Had our rehearsal, which was the first time I ever saw my venue due to planning from abroad (absolutely beautiful, took my breath away perfect) and alleviated a lot of my fears about everything.
Most of the morning of was lazy – now DH had a sore throat and his mom and sister took him to rite aid for some chloraseptic and motrin which worked perfectly, crisis #1 averted. Other than that I spent a lot of time zoning out on the internet trying not to stress, and stuffing my face with as much hotel food as possible because I knew I’d be too hype to eat later. (I get like that.) As the hour grew nearer, my amazing aunt went to the venue to direct setup for me of decor items and stuff (she is both unafraid to be bossy and has an amazing eye for that stuff) It actually was heavy rain and thunderstorms nearly all day, and magically cleared about an hour before we started. How perfect!
I got ready alone.
I know that’s weird but my nerves were shot and honestly my guy is the only person I can stand when I get serious anxiety, everyone else, even people I love, just make me want to throw up. So he stayed with me while I got my makeup on and then let me do my clothes alone. I had two outfits to do photos with. Originally I was going to wear one for the ceremony and one for the reception but note to any future brides, steel boned corsets are UNCOMFORTABLE. Who’da thunk, right? That outfit was absolutely gorgeous, but I could hardly breathe, so we did a first look and posed photoshoot in it, and then I just quickly changed into my blue dress which was much cozier. Actually extremely cozy! Everyone was complaining about the heat but me when we went outside, I had a breeze in my hoop skirt! 😛
One of the highlights from the photoshoot was total strangers from another wedding in that hotel showing up and taking pictures of me, and when we went outside in my blue dress with the wedding party, a duck-boat went by (those land/water amphibious tourist vehicles) and people were screaming and shouting congrats and telling me I looked like Cinderella. (A punkass cinderella I guess, what with the tats and pink hair.)
(Before costume change… and
….after…)
We walked to the boat just about on time and I was a little less nervous. The first look REALLY took the edge off. Actually my only real worry about my photos is that I smiled too much, I couldn’t stop all day. Doing the serious face was nearly impossible. We lined up and got out there quick, my friend who cued the music did a great job, and I felt like a princess walking in to the theme from My Neighbor Totoro (a Miyazaki film). We self-united, so no officiant, which was absolutely the right call and then some. The ceremony was short and sweet. My dad read from the Hitchhiker’s Guide and I nearly cried because he had read that book to me before I could read, and I got super nostalgic, then my now SIL read from The Velveteen Rabbit. We said our vows simultaneously, which we adapted to fit us from some buddhist vows that we had found. Speaking in unison with him made my nerves nonexistent and felt so nice.
The MOH/Best man handed us the silver roses that had the rings inside and we exchanged them, and recessed out to the very weddingy (something we had joked about for ages) fanfare from Fire Emblem, a video game we both like.
A wonderful touch by the venue was our personal… guy? I don’t wanna say butler but he basically was (and he was freaking awesome by the way) standing at the door to the cocktail hour area with two glasses of champagne on a tray. That was such a nice little moment for us, and also the only alcohol I drank all night because I wanted to be sharp and my stomach was empty. We had a minor snafu with the music at first (we DIY’d it) but I fixed it in short order and for the rest of the night it was perfect, I think I only visited the laptop a couple of times to make adjustments all night and people totally danced like crazy, I’m glad we didn’t have a DJ, this was so much more intimate and “us.” I loved being in control of the music and knowing what was coming and getting excited to hear a song we’d picked out, and then seeing other people (who we had had in mind when we picked it) get excited too!
I think most people didn’t really notice our spaceship table thing (naming the tables after fictional spaceships) but the younger crowd got pretty excited about it and that was enough for me.
We visited with everyone, I ate almost nothing still, asked our butler guy to make us a doggie bag of food to enjoy because the food was amazing but I just had no appetite as I had predicted. I managed some bread. Our butler guy had a special plate just for us for cocktail hour and it was hilarious seeing him dodge other people trying to take stuff off it. We’re not fancy people or used to being served that way, so it was a little uncomfortable at first but he was really chill and fun.
Our photographers were absolutely amazing and wonderful, we’d never met them so I was amazed at how fast we felt at ease with them. They took pictures of us around the ship and were great about giving me directions, I’m a little hopeless at posing. I got to chat with my friends who I never see and they were all having fun. Everyone kept coming by to tell us new cool things they had discovered on the ship and how great the food was. (Glad, because I feel like its one of the only things people remember later on haha) Eating dinner while the sun went down was beautiful.
The first dance, to You and I, by Ingrid Michaelson, was adorable if clutzy. Dancing in a hoop skirt was hard but fun!
About 3/4ths the way through dinner, something amazing happened – RANDOM FIREWORKS. Since we were on the deck of the ship we noticed the bangs right away, and lo and behold, someone else on the river was having a FULL-ON LEGIT FIREWORKS DISPLAY. Not just a couple little sparklers but REAL fireworks framed perfectly by the bridge over the river, and of course we took a million pictures and his sister was heard to joke “how am I gonna top this?!” We are still boggling over the *perfectly timed and placed* gorgeous fireworks at that *I didn’t have to pay for* because they just freaking happened out of nowhere! I get excited all over again every time I think about it. It couldn’t have been more perfect if it were planned.
We cut the cake, which was exactly as I had imagined it – blue ombre cake on the inside and covered in sprinkles on the outside, complete with our adorable little cake toppers of our favorite anime couple. (Simon and Nia from Gurren Lagann.) We were very clumsy about it but that seemed to be taken as endearing and we fed each other cake notably with no smashing. ;D The cake was probably the best cake I have ever had, hands down. Moist and sweet and perfect, and I’m not even a cake person. We’re going back to pick up the top tier today and I’m legitimately psyched about it because I want to eat more of that cake. (We’ll probably share it with the family staying in the hotel with us.)
Once the dancing got fully underway, we danced to a few songs before I started to crash, after which I just relaxed at our sweetheart table and watched the merriment. DH and the groomsmen all did a dance to the power rangers theme song, which was hilarious, and I mostly visited with friends between songs as my blood sugar dropped haha. Notable, I managed to pee in my hoopskirts all by myself like a big girl. 😛 (I used the backwards on the toilet method.)
We made our exit about 30 minutes before the party was due to end, doing a lot of delegating about the end of it to my sisters-in-law who rocked that beautifully. When we got off the boat we could see the people on the top deck who all waved to us as we left, which was sweet, and then either DH’s uncle or dad, I couldn’t quite tell who, yelled across the plaza, “GO HAVE SEX.”
Which, after a walk back to the hotel, also happened. (It HAD to, I spent a lot of money on that skimpy costume of DH’s first anime crush, haha.)
All in all, quite a few things were different from how I planned and imagined it, some details got changed or tossed out, even some big things got changed or tossed out last minute, but I wouldn’t change a thing, it was as perfect as I could possibly have hoped for.
