Planning a wedding is not for the faint of heart! If any of you have already put yourself through the tortuous tasks involved in it – well, I have now joined you in the ranks! For those of you who have NOT made the journey into wedded-planning bliss, you have my sympathy!
For those that have not accomplished this feat yet – I urge you to convince your daughter’s that the best thing to do for ALL concerned is to do one of two things…
1. Stick a ladder outside her window and hope that they run off and elope!
Or
2. Destination Wedding!
Either way, it is far less stressful for the Mother of the Bride AND, if they choose a destination wedding…YOU get a holiday out of the deal!
Alright, back to wedding planning nightmares…it all starts off unassumingly enough with the announcement some 8 months or so ago that your daughter (who swore from the time she was 12 that she would NEVER get married) has been bitten by the wedding bug and announced the date of October 3, 2009 as THE Big Day!
Hmmm…ok, so now we get to go dress shopping, and of course, back in February during a blinding blizzard (her ONLY day off work that week), Darling Daughter, #1 Bridesmaid and myself set off in MY car (as they were all too terrified to drive in a snowstorm) to look for the elusive dress of her dreams….we hit our first shop just a mile up the road from the house and the 2nd dress she tries on – WOOP-WOOP-WOOP-DING-DING-DING! We have a winner! I am astounded! Standing there dripping melted snow onto the carpet of this tiny shop she proclaims she has found THE dress! PERFECT I think! How lucky can I get! …. BUT…..she still wants to see EVERYTHING that’s out there so off we go, traversing said vicious storm (which is now really piling up) to 5 other stores where she tries on dress after dress after dress only to reject them as “too poofy”, “yuck – don’t want strapless” or “Mom, I seriously look like a cupcake in this dress”…so the next day, we are lucky enough to go back to shop # 1 and buy the dress of her dreams! I am thinking boy, this wedding stuff isn’t so bad! We got the dress fairly quickly and aside from the blizzard, not that painful!
So on we go with the rest of the details…WHERE do want to get married I ask? Thinking of several churches nearby that would love to the upcoming nuptials, but noooo, she being the “outdoorsy-type” (except when it comes to bugs), she wants to have the wedding OUTSIDE at my brother’s hobby farm. Hmmmmm…ok, YOU get to ask Uncle Tony and Aunt Wendy if they want to have 80 or so guests romping around their property. Well, as luck would have it, my brother (bless his heart) said YES! They would LOVE to host an outdoor shindig! SCORE! Man! I can not believe my luck! This is too easy I am thinking, where’s all the bad, horrid stuff I have been hearing about??? I am just waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop at this point…
So I ask her are you SURE you want to have a wedding outdoors? There is a lot of stuff that needs to be done versus renting a banquet hall and them doing all the work (catering, etc.), I OFFERED a destination wedding option to them at this point, but NOPE, they wanted to be surrounded by family for the happy day….darn….no Caribbean holiday for me….so I save my pouting for later and soon I am up to my eyeballs in wedding details….
Ordering a tent seems simple, what size? We need sides and a wooden floor as October weather in can be pretty dicey! We need heaters, (see earlier note of October weather) and then it’s on to what colour linens, how many tables, tableware, cutlery and all those thousands of little details that go with it…ok, we iron all those out, not without changing and revising things about 6 times between start of planning and up to day of event! BUT, we have another headache brewing…my dear brother’s hobby farm is located OUTSIDE city limits, meaning NO city services like water and sewer….they are on a cistern for water and a septic system for the um…other stuff…so, now what do we do with 80 people and their um…other stuff???? My brothers septic system simply will not handle that much “flow”! Well we found a marvelous company called “Room To Go”, and they have these glorified portable washrooms that look amazing!!! They look NOTHING like those tall blue “booths” that dot construction sites! They have running water, come fully equipped with soap, t.p. and are heated! (good thing on the heater…said October weather can get chilly at night and the ladies would not appreciate ice cold throne seats!).
Ok, that detail ironed out, on to the thousands of other things that need to be attended to….whose catering I ask? Fiance says “my family will do all the catering!” (his family is HUGE), so ok, WHAT is everybody bringing? I ask…”Oh, the stuff they make at Christmas for the clan of about 40, so they just need to double it”…ok…seems good enough, but WHAT is everybody making? Salads? Hot dishes? What about meat? What kind of meat? “Well…they will do the salads and hot dishes, but we need someone to pitch in and get the meat” he says….as he looks wistfully at hubby and myself….ok, we’ll get the meat ($$$ flying out my wallet…)…back to the WHAT do you want for meat? Steak and chicken he says….ok…WHAT kind of steak? There are a thousand cuts of steak and HOW are we going to cook them? “Oh we’ll BBQ them” he says….ok…WHO is going to BBQ them? “Oh we’ll get someone from one of the local golf courses – we know someone who works there that is the manager, she also said we can have 2 servers to help out”…great…I can see more $$$$ flying out of my wallet now that I have to pay for a cook and 2 servers….ok, so my next question…who is going to bartend the event? “um…do you know anybody from the local pub you and dear-soon-to-be-father-in-law go to”…..yes, we know somebody, let me ask her…more $$$ flying out my wallet…ok, tent – check, food – check, servers/cook/bartender – check, washrooms – check….big items are being ticked off the list, now onto the million little details like…where do you get those little butter packs that the restaurants serve? Little creamers for coffee, coffee stir sticks, sugar and splenda packets….we managed to get almost ALL of these items at Costco (great place!)…a few days later…when Dear Daughter is up to her eyeballs in things she has to do and what still needs to be done, she mentions to me….”Mom, you were right! We SHOULD have gone away to get married! There is SO much to DO!!!”…She’s lucky I love her cuz I wanted to SMACK her at that moment!!!
Then around this time, about 3 weeks prior to the event, what does she ask me to do??? “Mom, can you make a small cake for us to cut at the wedding?”….grrrrr…as if I didn’t have enough to do….thankfully she had ordered a cupcake tier through a local bakery but they wanted a real cake to slice…great…so now I jump onto LTH’s profile on AR and check out her fondant experiences…I have never worked with fondant before...talk about pressure!!! A week before the wedding, I am making different colours of fondant and designing a 6” round cake for them…after spending 3 long days, it finally comes together! I was actually quite pleased with the results!
Of course, this type of bliss is short lived…and it was then back to the detail planning, adjusting tent plans/layout, finalizing food details, waking up in the middle of the night to “oh cr@p... what about…..”, the blessed day is just a few days away and the tent is being delivered and set up, boy, what a production! 5 hours – start to finish, to get the thing done! Looks mighty fine doesn’t it?
The day before the wedding dawns and it is absolutely POURING down rain! We head to the meat packers to pick up 90 Striploin Steaks and 50 BLSL Chicken Breasts and head to my brothers….where we proceed to decorate the inside of the tent, set up all the tables and then SET each table with flatware, dishes, centrepieces, etc… the arbour that was situated outside, facing the horse pasture and decorated so beautifully with fall foliage was looking all droopy, if the rain continued, then we were destined for an INSIDE the tent ceremony….we spent several hours getting things ready and when we finished, we stole our daughter from her fiancé for the night and took her out to dinner and a couple nightcaps, then it was off to sleepyland till morning…
DAY of WEDDING dawned grey with the sun making peek-a-boo appearances, we were praying for good weather… I had made some “Healthy Nut Blueberry Muffins” (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Health-Nut-Blueberry-Muffins/Detail.aspx< ) and picked up a fruit tray for the girls when they arrived a little later. At 6:15 a.m., I went to wake sleeping beauty….who promptly muttered “mmffffnnnnn….can we postone this?” in a VERY sleepy voice… I said no sweetie – no sleeping in today! J (She later did not remember making that comment as I told her AND her new HUSBAND after the ceremony!). The Maid of Honour and Bridesmaids arrived about 7:30 a.m. to have their light breakfast and then it was off to the salon for the hair primping! 2 ½ hours later they come back, the photographer had arrived and was following them around snapping pictures until they were all blinded by the flashes! Soon the limo pulled up, the girls bounced in giggling like maniacs and off they went! My house in tatters, hubby and I finished last minute details and we headed up to my brothers….all the while, rain clouds were threatening but they held off…for the moment…until about 30 minutes before we were to start…dark, rumbly clouds started inching closer so the decision was made to move the arbour inside…
The girls waited inside my brother’s house with hubby until the JP arrived (who was LATE!!!!), then the procession of the wedding party finally began! With her father at her arm, my beautiful baby girl beaming the biggest smile I have ever seen…she looked truly gorgeous…. and there standing at the arbour, clad in his family’s Scottish Tartan, was my future son-in-law…looking absolutely ruggedly handsome….20 minutes later, they were pronounced man & wife! They whisked off to take photos at one of their favorite local waterfall sites and just then, the skies opened and it poured buckets for about 45 minutes….the rain trickled to a stop when the wedding party returned and the skies cleared…and at the most perfect moment, a double rainbow appeared behind the horse pasture as the horses grazed oblivious to what had transpired…we had the most awesome opportunity to take these great photos, even the professional photographer couldn’t believe her luck!
Then it was time to party till the wee hours of the morning and getting home at 3 a.m., hubby and I collapsed in bed and vowed NEVER to go through this again! The next morning, after Jr. woke up…I said if you ever want to get married – we will happily give you $$$$ and ship you off to Vegas!!!
We welcome our new son-in-law into the family with open arms, they are a perfect match for one another and we wouldn’t have had it any other way…except for maybe the destination wedding!
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