Wedding Recap

We did it! And so, wedding planning is done. I figured there's no better way to end a wedding planning blog than talking about the result of said planning. Right? Never mind the fact that the only people that I know read this were there for the whole thing. I'm going to pretend a bunch of strangers are actually interested.

After a lot of last minute stuff on Friday (funeral, Target, Costco to pick up cakes, Scancy's for ice packs for cakes, our apartment for some stuff we forgot to pack), we headed up to the farm to work on getting everything set up. Our directions were bad and traffic was worse, so it ended up taking us 5 hours to get there instead of the usual 2.5- 3. Marsha got there shortly after us and she and I decorated the heck out of our reception tent. Then we bounced over to the hotel. Darren asked me what we did that night and i laughed when I told him: grabbed some gas station food, showered, watched The Nanny, slept.

We did our hair at the hotel in the morning, then went to the farm to complete setup. My hair ended up withering in the heat, so Rebekah re-did it (in a slightly different but possibly more awesome style) it while Gina took pictures. Hooray for Gina and Marcus, by the way.

The weather forecast called for rain yesterday, but it held off long enough. It was very hot, but that was better than thunder and lightning. At least I think so. Pictures went well. I wasn't stressed at all. The whole "I'm getting married today" thing didn't really register. Except when my mom came to see me after I'd just gotten dressed and she started to cry. Then I cried. She did it again when she & dad gave me away. Silly mom, making me cry.

I only freaked out once: the wedding party was waiting in the living room before we began the ceremony. A few people hadn't arrived yet, including one of our readers. We were scheduled to begin at 4 and the clock read 4:20 and I was getting antsy. And then someone told me it was only 4:02. Thanks a lot, grandma, for your fast clock! RELIEVED!

We didn't rehearse and only met our officiant the day of. We found him online. Darren said he talked like Steve Brule (Google him!), but he got the job done.

Darren didn't write any vows, and just said what he felt right there. It was lovely. I had written mine and I literally sobbed through them. I start tearing up just thinking of myself up there, weeping.

We had a couple snafus with the music- our guy didn't fade out when we finished processing, just turned the song off. Then there was a long delay when the recessional song was supposed to start. it SO didn't matter. That's a perfect example of the small stuff that should not be sweated. Har har.

After the ceremony, all formality was done. I hung out with friends, ate delicious tacos, drank amazing beer. Most people didn't dance (so glad I decided not to rent the dance floor), and they bailed early when storm clouds started rolling in. Rightly so, as it got pretty brutal, but the whole storm lasted less than an hour. Several people planned to camp out, so those of us who did partied until about 2 am. At the end of the night, Darren and I retired to our tent. It actually sucked a little, because some rain had gotten in so everything felt damp. But we slept, so whatever. Tonight we get to sleep in our own bed.

It really was an amazing day. I'm excited to get pics from Gina for photographic proof that everything looked stellar.

Okay, this is long enough. I grabbed most of the photos that people posted on Facebook and put them on a website.