Wedding Recap – Part the Second

On Friday morning, I woke up and pretended that I wasn’t getting married the next day. That worked for about twelve seconds, but the sounds of happy (read: screaming) children running around downstairs prevented me from falling back asleep. And then I started thinking about everything on my to-do list and there was no chance of me sleeping again. Maybe ever.

It was 6:20 in the morning.

I stumbled downstairs, ate some cheerios (it’s very important that you know this. because…. because). And then I looked around and realized that all of the happy children had all gone back to bed.

So, I did the sensible thing and started preparing caramel apples.

***

In the run-up to our wedding, people would ask me how much work I had left to do and if I was starting to get nervous. I would reply, “I’m feeling pretty good and we just have a couple more things to finish up.” Because all I had left to do was make about 150 caramel apples. Which, if you think about it, is a bit like dragging yourself to the Everest base camp and then saying, “I’m feeling pretty good, we just have a few more miles to climb.”

If you ask anybody in my family about the caramel apples, they will roll their eyes at you. And possibly give an involuntary shudder. I somehow got it into my head that it would be a great idea to make a caramel apple for every single one of our wedding guests, to be used as both a favor and as an escort card. I had the cards all ready to go (partially prepared by my sister Allison who is truly a saint), and I was going to tape them to the caramel apple sticks. With cute paper tape in our wedding colors. Because, as has been well-established by now, I’m a crazy person.

Everyone but me thought that this was he most ridiculous idea ever.

Well, I can think of a few more ideas that are ostensibly more foolish (land wars in Asia, the Ford Pinto, Gigli), but this one was probably up there. In all other aspects of wedding planning, I was remarkably practical. I finished all of my craft projects early so that I wouldn’t have them looming over my head. I made sure to make a mental distinction between things that would be necessary, things that would be nice and things that would probably be too impractical to pull off. And by “mental distinction” I mean, “ran them by Kristian for a quick sanity check.”

But caramel apples. Caramel apples were almost my Waterloo.

Here we have a craft project (of sorts) that can’t be finished up ahead of time if you don’t want it to spoil and give your guests food poisoning (which, presumably, would put a major pall on your wedding day). It involves cooking up a confection that must walk a fine line between delightfully delicious and burnt to a crisp. It’s messy, it’s sticky and it takes up a ton of room in the refrigerator. And I wanted to make 150 of them.

In a moment of hubris, I assumed that I would be fine. I made two test batches: one with caramel candies, one with homemade caramel. I decided that homemade caramel wasn’t any harder to make (unwrapping hundreds of little candies is not exactly time efficient) and was infinitely tastier. I perfected my technique making a half dozen apples and then I declined to do the requisite math that would tell me how much time it would take to make a full batch (150 guests divided by 6 test apples times cooking time equals maybe you should stop making jokes about what a crazy person you are and get some professional help).

But on Friday morning, I was still feeling relatively cocky. Fueled by Cherry Coke Zero and my own bravado, I made 60 caramel apples all by myself. I left them to set in the fridge and I promised myself that I would make the next 90 or so apples later that day, preferably with help. Things I failed to take into consideration: time spent hanging out with friends, time spent hanging out with family, time spent rehearsing, time spent rehearsal dinnering, time spent drinking wine. But at 10:30 on Friday morning, I was sure that we’d find a way to finish the apples.

(Spoiler alert: plans change).

Allison pulled me out of my apple-induced haze by reminding me that we had a very important appointment to get to. By which I mean that she had thoughtfully booked massages for the two of us, Kristian’s sister Nina and our sister-in-law Vita. Nina and I drove to the spa together and she spent the drive telling me stories about their family. Surprisingly enough, I did not deposit her at the spa and then drive to Canada.

I was a little nervous that I would spend my entire massage either a) mentally running through my to-do list to the point where I’d be unable to relax or 2) sleeping. Kristian even joked that I should tip the masseuse an extra five bucks to pinch me every few minutes so that I would stay awake. I shouldn’t have worried. A combo massage was just what the doctor ordered (in this case, my sister-in-law the neurologist). In fact, you could almost credit my most excellent massage with the relaxed attitude that I brought to the rest of the weekend.

(But screw that: I’m hogging up all the glory).

(Because it was myyyyyyyyyyy daaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!).

(*barf*)

You know what was almost as relaxing as my treatment? Spending an hour by myself while the other ladies got their massages, sitting in the spa’s lovely lounge, watching the ocean, drinking tea and reading a book. Just because we invited 150 of our nearest and dearest to spend the weekend with us doesn’t mean it wasn’t good for me to spend a quiet moment by myself. And quiet it was. I didn’t think about seating charts, to-do lists or family politics the entire time I was sitting there.

(I know, I find it a bit hard to believe as well).

Look at that view and it's not so hard to believe.

By the time we were all finished up at the spa, I was feeling both relaxed, recharged and ready to rejoin the fray.

Part the next: The Fray.