Our Actual Wedding

My Musings on the Subject

• Pack snacks and cold drinks for the wedding party, since you’ll all forget to eat.
• The bouquet is important. You won’t think it is, but it will be.
• Have your hair and makeup done.
• You won’t remember a thing about the wedding.
• Even if you’ve lived together before the wedding, it makes a huge difference. You won’t be prepared for how different you feel.

Here’s my take on the above, and a debrief of the Big Day…

• I made overnight oatmeal the night before the wedding, and Camille and I got up and had a bowl for breakfast. (Too much liquid, so it wasn’t great, but hey, it was food.) Todd scrounged for himself. On the way to the church, we stopped at Taco Bell and got food to take with us, and scarfed it in the basement of the church before going upstairs to decorate. Packing snacks and drinks would have just added to the chaos…the main point is to remember to eat. I don’t think any of us were stressed out enough to forget, though.
• The bouquet was unimportant to me. I went through a moment of panic a week or so ago when I thought I wanted a big poofy flowy one, then I realized I wanted to stick to the Renaissance feel, and added some wheat and lavender to my little dried bouquet, and it was fine. It shed everywhere, but it was fine. We had no florist, and that was nice too.
• Having your hair done is a fantastic piece of advice, particularly if you have a headpiece. The hairstylist glued mine to my head at 11:30am, and it was still firmly wedged in place 12 hours later. Amazing. That hairdo was the best $45 I spent for the entire wedding, I think. On the other hand, I did my own makeup, and never gave a thought to letting someone else do it. I’ve been wearing makeup most days for 20 years, though, so anyone who doesn’t wear it on a regular basis would probably want to have it done by someone.
• I remember most things about the wedding. The ceremony went really fast, and though I remember being up there and looking at Todd and saying stuff and thinking “chest up, speak from the diaphragm, project, turn towards the audience with the bouquet”, I don’t really remember what was said. That’s okay, we got a copy of the ceremony from the pastor. I remember most everything else, though.
• I really don’t feel any different. We don’t feel any different to me. Todd keeps taking every opportunity to call me his wife, and introduce me as such, and tell everyone we’re just married, but that’s about it. Puttering around the house last night felt just like puttering around the house last week. But then, Todd was more nervous before the wedding than I was too. I guess once I’d made up my mind that he’s the one, that was where the nerves died. I mean, the rest is just technicalities, right?

Apparently I was a freak, or something. The caterer kept asking me if I felt as calm as I seemed. Well, um, yeah? What’s to panic about? It’s a wedding, not the end of the world…*cough* Um. But seriously, I’ve helped coordinate events for 10 times that many people, and this wasn’t much to stress over. I had everything done ahead of time. I even had time on Friday to repot and water and trim my indoor plants. I suspect more than one person is taking note of this trait of mine, to plan in my head and know exactly how much time I do or do not have for something, and then work so that I’m done just in time, with enough breathing room to be calm but not so much that I have copious time to worry or secondguess myself.

The one glitch was Thursday when I couldn’t get the music to burn on the CD’s. Well, it burned, but it wouldn’t play on a regular CD player. Fortunately, my newly-acquired brother is a music-and-DVD burner addict, and we called him. Bless his heart for not laughing at me for not knowing that CD-RW’s wouldn’t play on a CD player. He gave us 4 regular CD’s, it all burned fine after that. Not much of a glitch, really, all things considered.

The caterer arrived at about 2:00 on Saturday, picked up all the stuff, and kept telling me I had enough food to feed 400 people. I knew that, but I never know when to stop. It’s the hobbit in me. Keep people fed, give them small gifts, that’s a party. We loaded the rest of the crap in the truck, made our Run for the Border at Taco Bell, realized we’d forgotten Todd’s hat, went back, reloaded, and went to the church. That was the only thing we forgot, amazingly enough.

After scarfing food, we decorated. Not much to do. Eric Ryan was there early and helped us peel candles for the altar. We put the pew banners up, I dressed the ushers, put up the ropes for the families, and set up the guest book table. The caterers were fantastic. They were so worth whatever they charged…not so much for the food, which was great too, but for their coordination and their ability to seamlessly set it all up, keep it filled, create “care packages”, and take it all down again. Just amazing. I never had to lift a finger or fret about the food. I didn’t actually get to taste any of it either, except two slices of bread and a couple of magic cookie bars, plus a half bottle of sparkling cider I grabbed as we were cleaning up.

I made a last pee break about 4:30, and then locked myself away in the bride room and whined to Camille that it was no fun being the bride because I wanted to go out and play and see people and greet them. Todd got to do that, at least. We got dressed, and giggled a lot, and made rude noises. I sent her out a couple of times to be sure the wedding coordinator, Barry “the gay man with the clipboard”, knew that we’d changed a bit on the seating order, and to tell Doug Stephens what needed to be done with the music I’d shanghaied him into running for me. Doug had popped up at about 11:00 that morning at my folks’ house when Camille and I stopped to get Mom to go to the hairdresser, which was a very nice surprise.

I didn’t find out until the next day, but the seating order switch went just fine. We’d added Todd’s stepfather’s mother to the order, and to get the mothers seated by their “sons”, we had to reverse the first two. This left Chris seating my gramma, Corey seating my mom’s parents, Chris seating his stepgramma, Corey seating Todd’s dad and stepmom, then Chris seating his mom and stepdad and Corey seating my mom. Worked well. Music apparently went just as well…I heard them start to play the Prelude CD at 5:00, and then I did hear the march I’d chosen more or less at random for myself as I was walking down the aisle. I know they played music when we walked out too, but I couldn’t tell you what it was.

We wound up doing a receiving line more or less by mistake, as we stopped just inside the reception area. We greeted everyone, and then shoved them at the food. I got to see everyone at least briefly that way, and see all the costumes. We had several armed swordsmen, a king on a horse, a jester, a monk, a couple of serving wenches, and lots of royalty. Pretty amusing, all things considered.

Got a few compliments about the goodies, but I guess Todd heard more about it than I did. See, my friends have been to my holiday shindigs, and this wasn’t really anything new or exciting to them. I bake a lot every year around this time. Plus they’re used to me being crafty and sewing costumes and making lots of things. But his family and friends weren’t used to it. Eric kept telling me how much he liked the baklava, which was a first attempt for me. Baklava is easy, really, but it’s like baking with tissue paper. More time intensive than difficult by far. Camille learned why I hate molding candies, and why it’s faster to cut the caramels with kitchen shears than a knife.

The cornucopias vanished, per our plan. I gave the largest one to the pastor and her husband, Del and Linda took one, Gramma took one, my mom’s folks took one, Phil and Mev took one, Jack and Olga took one, my cousin got one, and there was another one I didn’t account for, but whatever. I can make more if we need to do so, but mostly the point was for friends and family to have decorations for Thanksgiving and for me not to have to bring eight of the suckers home with me. Oddly, we didn’t even wind up with ONE. Which is fine, I made them, I’ll make more, plus we’re not doing Thanksgiving at our house.

We didn’t wind up with much leftover food, either…I had some that never left the house, mostly quickbreads. I had some zucchini bread for breakfast this morning…damned good, actually, even without butter. I have a loaf of pumpkin in the fridge at home. I brought some to work, too, along with the last of the wrapped chocolate nuggets. We wound up with four extra favor bags, and it turns out the twins had lost theirs somewhere and wanted us to send them two, and I wanted one for the keepsake book, so we only had ONE lone extra bag. Not bad. Thanks mostly to Camille handing them out at the end of the receiving line, I think…

Todd’s Mom and stepdad were not really dressing in costume as of Friday. Del had a monk’s robe, which was great, and his mom had a renaissance-esque gown, which was very pretty but not a “costume”. Then Todd’s second cousins, “The twins”, showed up from Idaho with gowns and regalia, and the best man’s wife told us about a great costume shop they found in Kelso, and that was it. Del and Linda showed up in fabulous outfits, blue and purple, and they looked just amazing. Todd’s dad and stepmom didn’t dress up, but that was okay. I made Chris and Corey wear surcoats over black pants and black shirts, and though Chris said he was going to take it off right after the ceremony, he had it on all night. Given how many people were in costume, I think he felt less stupid than he expected.

Best comment in the guest book was Sonja’s…I’d made some comment on LiveJournal about hoping people would sign more than their names, like “yearbook style, but only without the ‘stay sweet’ and ‘friends 4 ever’ stuff.” Sonja wrote “Hope to know you better next year!” She and Clarica and Llyra wrote yearbooky stuff, then signed for real later. It’s so nice to have friends who get it. ;-)

Jack’s toast was long, but nice. Given that he had some other stories he could have told, I was very glad he stuck to the basics of how Todd and I met, and how we kind of got together without actually telling Jack. Or much of anyone else, for that matter. Jack made reference to the fact that in between our meeting and our dating I was dating someone else, and when he came to a bit where he said, “And then she got rid of him”, Jeff had to pipe up, “And I’m wearing his shirt!” So I guess the bride made outfits for two ushers, the best man, a shirt for the groom, and a shirt/tunic for a guest…yikes.

Todd and I were literally the last people out the door that night. The only thing we forgot at the church was Todd’s shirt in the basement bathroom, and we retrieved that the following morning. Not too shabby! Someone wrote “Lord and Lady - Just Married” on the back of the truck, which was funny and kinda cool.

We went to the Hilton that night, and watched cartoons and took braids and bobby pins out of my hair, and got up and had breakfast the next morning at Waddle’s before going to my mother and father’s to open booty. I did lose my nice new green celtic bracelet in the room, but I noticed in the lobby and went back for it, found it hiding under the pillow. My aunts and uncles and gramma chatted with us as we opened gifts, which was nice, then we all went to our house so they could see where we lived. Notably unusual wedding gifts included wonderful live plants from Sean, a 5’ handmade broom from Doug (there’s a history behind it, plus he’s a pioneer days reenactor), and a 6’ claymore from Jeff and Kathy. More traditional gifts included a leaded glass “bonbonniere”, which I assume is a candy dish, and 12 charger plates from a friend of Todd’s. Um. Anyone know what Charger plates are for? We didn’t. Now we do. I don’t think we’re classy enough for them. But Todd and I laid in bed last night, and we were talking about the best gift we got…and it was the presence of so many of our friends and family at a really fun occasion. Can’t be bought, wouldn’t trade it for the world.