Wedding Recap: Part the Fourth

I think that every bride, on her wedding day, is contractually obligated to wake up, squeal “OMG, we’re getting married!” while jumping up and down on her fiancé’s head. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Squealing aside, I was surprised by how calm I felt on the morning of our wedding. Sure, I was happy, but for some strange reason, I wasn’t all that nervous. Some of that was probably the letting go that I talked about in my last post. But a lot of it was knowing that I was going to marry Kristian. Everything else was just details.

One thing that did make me feel a little nervous was getting the ceremony and reception sites all set up. We knew we’d have some help from our friends, but we weren’t sure how much help. And we were starting from a blank canvas.

It takes a lot of work to make a tent look this good.

Our friends Emily and Josh showed up early to help us out and we got to work. There were a lot of tables and chairs to setup and lots of decorations to put out. I was excited to see all of my hard work coming together, but also a little concerned about how we were going to get it all done. I started to envision myself, all dolled up in my wedding dress, frantically putting out chairs.

Like so many things in my life, I shouldn’t have worried so much.

The rest of our friends descended on the field like a swarm of helpful bees (I originally said friendly locusts, but my sister Melissa pointed out that friendly locusts are pretty much bees). It was like I blinked and everything happened at once. The ceremony site was transformed. The tent was ready to go. The decorations were out. Everything looked beautiful.

I started wandering around aimlessly, trying to figure out what else needed to be done. There were a few more things that needed to be taken care of, but they’d all been delegated to people who weren’t me. Someone noticed my aimless wandering and told me to go do something bridal. It didn’t take much arm twisting. I took one look at my nails, which looked like they’d been attacked by angry beavers, and decided that getting a manicure might not be such a bad idea.

Allison said about this photo, "Nice cheekbones.... on the hot dog."

I called up my bridesmaids, who were busy getting their hair done, and we agreed to meet up at a local nail salon.

Apparently, if you want to get your nails done on a Saturday morning, it would be a good idea to make an appointment ahead of time. My plan was to spend all morning working on setup, so I hadn’t bothered to make an appointment somewhere. The woman at the nail salon that I drove to almost sounded offended that I hadn’t called in advance. I resisted the urge to yell, “But it’s my daaaayyyyyyyyyyyy!” and hit her over the head with my bouquet. Mostly because my friends were still back at the ceremony site making it, so she would have been mystified as to why I was pumping my hand up and down in an empty chopping motion.

I think that it says something about the anti “Bridezilla” backlash in our culture that, out of all of the nail salons that I called, I didn’t feel comfortable telling a single one of them that I needed an early appointment if I was going to make it to my wedding on time. I just said, “No openings? Thanks anyways” and called the next salon on the list. There’s a decent chance that one of them would have snuck me into the schedule if I’d explained my quandary. But I just didn’t feel comfortable playing that card.

Well, that takes care of the "something blue."

I was ready to purchase an emory board and some clear nail polish when my sister Christina remembered that the local Wal-Mart has a nail salon in the front of the store. We figured it was worth a shot, so off to Wal-Mart we went. They fit me in quickly and the nice nail tech got to work on my fingers. This was going to be a fancy wedding, so I splurged and picked out a color with a crackle effect. Because nothing says classy like a crackle effect manicure from Wal-Mart.

With my nails all prettied up, we headed back to the house to have my friend Jen work that same magic on our faces.

When we decided to use the sun room of the house that we were staying in, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about the lack of privacy. I liked that we’d have tons of natural light and plenty of space to move around in. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it that anybody could poke their head in and say hi.

Getting prettified.

It turns out, that was one of the best parts of the whole getting ready process.

(Funny, how the things you don’t plan for end up being the things that you love the most).

(Don’t tell the Type A part of my personality that I said that).

My Mom and sisters were able to wander in and out. The kids came running around, delighting us all. People would come in to ask questions or just to hang out for a few minutes. My sister-in-law, Vita brought in her daughter’s flower girl dress so that we could see what a nice job she did ironing it. Her husband, my step-brother Jeremy, walked in and demanded photographic proof that his wife had actually ironed something.

The whole time we were hanging out, my nephew Dmitri was there with us. I was surprised that a five-year-old wanted to spend so much time with a bunch of girls, but I guess he hasn’t yet realized that we’re all swarming with cooties.

I completely lost track of time, but Beans was kind enough to remind me that I might want to think about putting my wedding dress on at some point. I mean, we did spend a little bit of cash on it. And our guests would probably have been a little confused as to why I was walking down the aisle naked.

So, out came the dress. “Wow,” Dmitri said, “that’s big.”

(Understatement of the year).

It took some time for Beans to lace me up. I clung to my Mom like I was a Victorian woman being straight-laced (which I pretty much was) and she was a bed post. Beauty hurts, y’all.

We stopped to play a couple of quick games of thumb war and then it was time to go find my future husband and see about getting married.

We each won a game. I may or may not have let him.

Up next: I make an honest man out of Kristian.