Going With the Flow

I won’t say much here, except to tell you not to expect your wedding to be perfect. Realize that the cake could hit the floor, your dress could tear, your caterer might get lost, it could snow…who knows. Who cares? Be happy, it’s supposed to be a fun and joyous event, not an ordeal. Is the point of the wedding a perfectly orchestrated performance, or a celebration of your union and your friends and family? If it’s really the former for you, consider strongly hiring a wedding coordinator, professional caterers, professional musicians, professional photographers, professional florists, and everyone else you can possibly dig out of the woodwork. If it’s the latter, just relax. A couple of anecdotes for no readily apparent reason:

I bought my tiara online because I really loved the design, and had determined that I wanted a tiara instead of a veil. I had planned on having a burgundy dress for years, so I bought the perfect (I thought) garnet rhinestone accented tiara. It arrived, and it was nice. Then we got to really picking wedding clothes…and I ended up in a green dress. Rats. Time to find a new tiara. But it turned out, as I was examining it, that the colored stones on the tiara were JUST PAINTED!! I chipped off all the burgundy paint, and it was a plain crystal tiara. On the one hand, I could have been doubly pissed that it was merely painted and that my colors had changed, but instead I went to Michael’s, grabbed a bottle of emerald glass paint, came home and repainted the previously burgundy stones a lovely shade of green. They look better than they started out, and they match the dress. Problem solved. Lesson learned, too…if you want a tiara or other rhinestones to match your colors, buy clear and paint them with a tiny brush and a bottle of glass paint.
At Greg and Hollie’s wedding, they had two candelabras and two candle lighters. What they didn’t know was that the candles were the “quick-light-one-use” sort, and they’d been used for the pre-ceremony picture session. The candle lighters got up to the altar and started lighting. As they got to about the third candle, the first ones went out. Light the fourth, the second went out. Fifth lit, third out, and so on. They got all the way around the candelabra twice, stoically trying to keep them all lit. Everyone started getting the giggles. When all the candles finally stayed lit, the guests burst into spontaneous applause, much to the confusion of Hollie and her family. It was probably the best mood-setter they could have had, since everyone thought it was hysterical, including the mother of the groom.