Blleeeuuuuurrrgggghhhhhh
Was my first thought on waking up on my wedding day. My second thought was just that- dear God I am HAVING A WEDDING today and am having trouble finding the strength to ROLL OVER. I was still battling a terribly hungry and empty tummy, yet the thought of actual food continued to repulse me. I reached for the phone and dialed room service:
T….ttt….toooa…. TOOOAST…. Bring…. TOOOOAST!!
Those slices of dry toast might as well have been Thanksgiving freaking dinner that morning. Absolutely heavenly. This would be my go-to nourishment from this point on, and Jeff still enjoys poking fun at all the expensive hotel toast I went through that weekend! They also brought in the newspaper with the food and I will ALWAYS remember seeing that date on there that morning. June 5, 2010. It was HERE. TODAY. Holy CRAP. It becomes such an abstraction when you type it on fifty inquiry emails, write it on contracts, repeat it to a hundred people over the course of a year and a half, and stamp it on a hundred (and twenty) gourmet paper bags. It was definitely a woooowwww moment seeing it looking up at me from the newspaper.
Anyway. First up on the agenda for the day, at 8:00am mind you, was my designated last-minute tanning time at the pool, which was of course printed on the official manifest with an invitation to any who wanted to join. Happily my bridesmaids have better heads on their shoulders than me, and I received a chipper call that they had arrived at the pool and the sun was out!
I went straight out and mercifully felt better at this point. I spent the rest of the morning with Gracie and the bridesmaids and our BFF Zach who had just arrived all the way from Florida!! We caught up, laughed, relaxed, raced the family kids on the water slide, and basically had a really, really awesome morning. Everyone should spend their wedding morning like this!!
Gracie and Kim found time to enjoy the croquet lawn (I love these photos)…
Unfortunately I required extensive professional work to get bride-ready so was the first one to scoot off to the spa. I rushed through a quick shower (I didn’t even thoroughly shave my legs… another fail), threw on white shorts and an oxford, and it was primping time! I was first in the hair-chair and my mom and the bridesmaids filed in after me…
Sufficiently hotted out, it was back to the bat cave to get things started! Jeff had been long booted from our room and taken up temporary residence with the groomsmen. My mom and sister came in with food and tried to get me to eat (uh uh), the photogs arrived, Pastor Nancy arrived, THE FLOWERS ARRIVED…
Swoooooon. I loved those things. Anyway. Photog Cyndi stuck around with us chicks and second shooter Claudine went off to tend to the gentleman. Let the photo-ops begin!
On came the dress…
And the pearls…
And the shoesies…
And a bridey was born!
And the bridesmaids. Oh. My. Gosh. HOTNESS. They looked absolutely gorgeous. Gorgeous times infinity since there were five of them! Sadly we didn’t get any pictures of all them together during the getting ready process, but here Kristine models (well, headlessly) their peachy-pearly-awesomeness…
Meanwhile, the gentleman got a few portraits in… Looking good, guys!
At this point we were about 30 minutes out from the scheduled start of the ceremony. Looking out the window I could see guests filing down to the garden below. This was happening!!! Wedding Coordinator Woman and her helper-outer joined us signaling it was definitely go-time. Unfortunately she did not have the best news. Apparently, “something big” was headed this a-way on the old doppler radar. She advised we get the ceremony started ASAP to get ahead of it, which I consented to.
I shut the door behind us and our envoy started making our way down…
To be continued!
