Wednesday, July 29, 2015

The Morning of the Wedding aka Don't Look Now!

When I finally gave up on falling back to sleep, Kate came in and we hung out for a bit, then she went down the street to get a coffee.  I am not a coffee drinker so I had nothing to offer.  I tried to fall back to sleep when she was gone, but no luck so I finally got up.  I don't remember everything that happened that morning.  I know there was some TV watching, some chatting with Kate, texts and calls, Facebook (so strange to see people posting about me on Facebook), and breakfast.  And it wasn't long before it was 12:00 and time to go get my make up done and drop off the last minute stuff at the reception (the make up place was in the same building as my reception so that made it quite convenient).  The building is also a hotel and my future in-laws, the groomsmen, and my husband to be were all staying there.  I didn't think any of them would be around, but it was almost noon and I suspected they'd had a late night so they could very well be congregating for lunch.  I made Kate go first to check to make sure the coast was clear (you know because the bride and groom aren't supposed to see each other on the day of their wedding until the actual wedding).  She said we were good to go.  I spotted some groomsmen down the hall, but no fiancĂ©.  So I started to walk in--WAIT!  He's there, hurry, hide!  Okay, I don't think those were her exact words (it was 11 months ago), but you get my drift.  I went and hid behind a pole.  Then my in-laws popped up out of nowhere and my future father-in-law and wanted to know what I was doing hiding behind a pole.   It was kind of funny.  Eventually, the coast was cleared--for real.  I dropped off the stuff I needed to drop off (my computer for a slideshow) and I sent Kate to give Mike his wedding gift from me.  Kind of ironically, we got each other similar gifts.  The night before he gave me a necklace and I gave him a new charm for a necklace because his broke a while back. 
Then it was off for the possibly nerve-wracking process of having my make up done.  It didn't end up being so bad this time.  Thankfully, there was water proof make up this time so my eyes did not look crazy!  No baseball or raccoon look this time.  And the make up lady was so patient with me as she knew I had issues with eye make up, but she said I did much better.  She did a great job and then it was back home to get my hair done.  Only a little over 4 hours until wedding time! 

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Pictures

So I finally figured out how to get the pictures from my old phone onto my computer from the rehearsal dinner.  So here they are...
In case you were wondering, this is what approximately 175 mini loaves of bread look like.  (We dropped these off at the reception the day before the wedding.)  Below are pictures of friends and family at the Rehearsal Dinner. 




The Night Before the Wedding

With a title like that I feel like I should be rhyming, Twas the Night before the wedding, and the bride couldn't fall asleep.  She was so tired, she wanted to weep.  She just settled down for a nice summer's nap, but no sleep would come, she could have probably gone and run many a lap.  Okay, I'll stop before it gets any worse...
I don't know if anyone is even still reading my blog since I've been out of blog land for SOOOO LONG.  It wasn't always on purpose.  True some nights, I just didn't feel like blogging.  I preferred to read a book or watch tv, but other nights, I really couldn't blog.  Other nights I had a TON of work to do.  Then I was away for one week in April, which at the rate I'm going, you'll probably hear about next April.  Then work got busy in late May through the end of June and my computer broke AGAIN!  So I finally had free time to blog (time off in June) and NO computer.  Such is life, right!  Then I just hasn't blogged in so long that I wasn't in the mood, but here I am again.  I know I told you I would pick up from my rehearsal dinner and post pictures, but the pictures were saved on my old computer (which broke ages ago) and I'm just too lazy to hook up my scanner and scan in the pictures.  I even spent the past half hour trying to get them from my old phone to my computer. No luck!  So I tried to e-mail them to myself, well, the e-mail on my phone keep freezing and closing.  :-(  So if it ever works, I'll post in a future blog, but for now my apologies.  That'll teach me to wait 5 months to finish a blog! 
I did my best to mingle with people.  It was good practice for the wedding--trying to get around to see everyone!  I think I did fairly well though.  My brother was quite the schmoozer too.  He hadn't seen some of my friends in years, but he made the rounds, met the in-laws, met the friends he didn't know, etc.  I must have done quite well because I LOVE dessert and I didn't get any because I never saw them bring out the dessert tray because I was chatting.  Anyway, I thought dinner went well, the food was good (well, one person didn't like it, maybe two, but I THINK and HOPE everyone else did, many people told me they liked it so I hope they were telling the truth, but why go out of your way to tell someone the food is good if it's not? Wouldn't you just not say anything?  So maybe it was just that one guy).  I think my parents secretly enjoyed hanging out with my friends because they used to see some of them like every week, but now that we're all grown up, they hardly ever see my friends any more and so it was nice for them.  And they finally met my friend Natalie who they'd never met before because she lives far away (and they still sing her praises!).  I think it was a long day for my grandmother, but she seemed to enjoy meeting everyone.  I was thrilled she was able to make it because she lives a plane right away and has had a few health issues over the years so I was a happy girl to have good friends and good family surrounding me.  I wrote a little thank you speech for the evening as a prequel to the gift giving.  I think it went mostly well, despite my fear of public speaking.  I rushed a bit to make it not as long, but I mentioned everyone who was there--even the spouses of people in the wedding--they got a kick of that.  So yeah, and then way too quickly the dinner was over and people began leaving.  I had  great time though!  The groom and groomsmen all had big drinking plans and some of the girls had families to get home to so we were done before 10:00. Thankfully, I did not have to go home alone. My maid of honor wanted to stay with me.  When she first offered, I thought wouldn't she rather stay in a comfy bed in her mom's house instead of my semi okay futon in the guest room, but in retrospect I'm glad I had a good friend to hang out with me the night before the big day.  So after dinner, Kate and Natalie came over.  Natalie had never been to my house before (remember she lives far away) so I made sure the house was clean.  :)  (Okay, that wasn't the only reason, I knew people would be coming by and of course there'd be picture taking and bridesmaids getting ready so I was extra careful about cleaning the place up).  Anyway, we had a great visit and Natalie even blogged about it.  If I were smart like her, I'd put a link to her blog here, but I'm not tech savvy.  :-)  She left a while later and Kate and I hung out for a bit, checked some last minute wedding stuff, and then started to watch 27 Dresses (or what some people refer to as the story of my life, but that's a story for another blog post, maybe next time I have a brain freeze on blog topics, I'll blog about that).  I figured if we were going to watch a movie, it should be a good wedding one.  I had a plan to watch a bunch of wedding chick flicks in the days leading up to my wedding, but I was too busy to watch many.  I started getting tired so I called it quits part way through the movie and went to bed, BUT I got VERY LITTLE SLEEP.  I was tired so why couldn't I sleep?  I even got up around 1am or so to see if I had Benadryl or Nyquil or something to help me sleep.  No luck!  I kept looking at the clock, closing my eyes, not falling asleep.  I don't think it was nerves because although I get nervous about everything, I didn't feel that nervous.  I was excited, but I was tired too so I don't know if I was too excited or too nervous or what!  I think I only got about three hours of sleep, but much to my amazement I was NOT exhausted at wedding time and I did not have big bags under my eyes--thank goodness!  And all of a sudden it was my wedding day!