The Wedding Week - Part I

**This is so ridiculously overdue... sorry! I was hoping to gather some more pictures, but never fear, the day of and day after have way more pictures! I think enough time has passed that I can truly appreciate how everything worked out. **



Oh, the wedding week. It had its ups and its downs (although few). I was SO SO SO blessed to have so many friends and family around willing to jump in and help. And a mother-in-law who always made sure I had a full glass of wine in my hand. :)


We got to Florida at 1am on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. On Wednesday, Nick and his brother started stringing the lights in the trees. Nick's dad finished our aisle & altar. Mandi, Nick's sister flew in from Iowa. We went and got the marriage license.

Thursday came and we continued doing lights. We met with the caterer, we picked up tables, we ran to the grocery store, we planted ferns, we went to the site of the Rehearsal party to check it out and decorate. FedEx came around 12:30 pm with 13 boxes of flowers. That's right THIRTEEN boxes of flowers! I had never seen so many freggin flowers in my entire life. Never one to underestimate how many flowers I should have, 2 more boxes of flowers arrived on Friday (Thank you Mom!) The rest of Thursday was spent getting the flowers into buckets with FloraLife. Apparently the flowers have to be cut underwater... So, my mom, my stepfather & I sat on the back porch until after dark cutting flowers underwater. I was a soppy mess by dinnertime. We had amazing turkey burgers that my awesome in-laws made.

That brings us to Friday. Oh. Lovely. Friday. The day before the day of. Friday was supposed to be a good day. And I guess, all in all, it was. The tent (which I swore I didn't want, and ended up working out anyway), the chairs, and the bathrooms were delivered. The house and yard was FULL of people. The remaining bits of garden were mulched. Silk flowers were put in along the fence. The tent was strung with lights. The bathrooms were delivered and decorated. The pears had their hangtags tied on. The day was crazy. Needless to say, I was pulled in a thousand different directions, and had a ton of family and friends working away. And when I had a moment to take a breath, my 15 year old brother was walking around the yard playing a bagpipe with a herd of children dancing along behind him. It was very surreal - maybe I had just drank too much wine...

Flowers. Oh my god. Those friggin' flowers. My mom, along with Nick's aunt and a variety of other people were supposed to do flower arrangements. That really didn't work out... My dear friend Annike and I ended up busted out some mason jars and clippers and got to work. We had NO IDEA what we were doing, but in the end, the flowers couldn't help but look nice. Nick's Aunt helped with the centerpieces & bouquets (we had made small nosegays for the women in the family, but I don't think they ever got handed out...), and my mom did the boutonnieres. We had a gazillion different colors of roses & spray roses (my favorite were the peach English garden roses), calla lilies in 5 shades, anemones, tulips, lizianthus, magnolia leaves, eucalyptus, and olive branches. DIY is great, but I have decided that playing your own florist on the day before your wedding, with only a few hours to work with is a bad idea...

Then our officiant, and dear friend MZ showed up and we got to rehearsing. Nick and I had bought Sonny's BBQ, so everyone who had been working all day could chow down. Most everyone left once they were done eating to go get cleaned up for the rehearsal (supposed to be a pool, but it got moved inside) party. We still had some stragglers hanging out until they were ready to go over to the party, so I ended up not getting a shower, and throwing on my dress and some makeup. I painted my toenails on the 3 minute drive to the hotel (no worries - I wasn't driving).

The rehearsal party ended up being wonderful. It was more of a "welcome to town"/meet & greet party than a rehearsal party, but "rehearsal party" gives one the right idea. It was supposed to be a pool party, but it was kind of cold and drizzly, so the hotel gave us a private party room, which was pretty cool. We got to see all of our friends and family that had come into town for the wedding, and all of the in-town friends and family we hadn't yet seen since getting to town. This was the first opportunity I really got to hang out with my sister and nieces. I miss them so much, and it was so awesome they were able to drive down from Tennessee.

Posing with Jessica

The shuttle launch was that night, so we all went outside to watch from the parking lot. It was better than fireworks, and added a magical feel to the whole evening. (Fast forward the video to about second 15 if you're impatient like me - and BTW, this was way cooler in person.)

Waiting for the shuttle launch

Our friend Shaun's birthday happened to be the same night as our rehearsal, so we surprised him with a cake! I had hoped someone got a picture of that, but I'm not sure if they did...
There was an after-party up in the hotel room that night. Nick and I went up to hang out for a bit, and as soon as the elevator doors opened, all we could hear was this horrible yelling noise. And as we got closer to the room, it got louder. And all I could think as I passed my parent's room and my grandmother's room and our more subdued friends' rooms is please don't let that be our partying friends.... Yeah. Room 417. They bring the party. I'm pretty sure they were playing WWF in the hotel room. Nick and I told them the cops had been called (I'd be surprised if they hadn't), and got everyone out of the hotel and to another friend's house. Whew. After that, I was spent. And I had to get up at 7 a.m. for my hair appointment the next day - OUR WEDDING DAY! So, we went home, had a glass of wine with Nick's parents & siblings, and went to bed.