Just to recap...when we last left off, my handsome boyfriend had proposed to me (complete with getting frenched by our dog mid-proposal), we had introduced the two sets of parents. About eight months later, wedding preparations and partying is in full swing...we had the bridal shower of the century, followed by not one, but two bachelorette parties, one of which included a sailor hat and some drunken Lonely Island sing-alongs. We hit a few hickups in the road, including an accidental viewing of my wedding dress and the inadvertant implication that we would be cannibalizing small children at our reception, but all in all, things were trucking along.
We've finally reached the week of the wedding...the final stretch before the big day. A lot has happened between the proposal and now, so I felt it only far to properly catch you up before we launch into the big day...
I ended up working clear up to the Wednesday before the wedding. I would have loved to take the whole week off (and frankly, I probably needed it), but I had just gotten back from a research trip to Europe (yes, I spent a week in Europe with no cell phone and crap internet two weeks before our wedding...no, it wasn't my brightest moment, but my hands were kinda tied). I had come back from Europe with what was probably the worst sinus infection / case of bronchitus I'd ever had in my life, so I needed to work at least part of the week to make up for the time off I had had to take.
Our vendors had all been settled in the months prior, and we were in the final stretch of last-minute details, playlists and payments.We were in the final stretch of DIY as well...remember that big 'ol list of DIY projects I had intended to attempt? Well, turns out we knocked out most of them...and added a few more. But there will be more on that later...
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My gorgeous mama and I at a local beach pub the weekend before. Holy lord, my bangs were long. |
Family and friends began arriving the weekend before the wedding. My mom was the first one in town, and from the moment she set her suitcase in the guest room, she proceeded to clean our entire house with the fervor of a woman possessed. Which was utterly fantastic, considering the amount of shit I still had to do before the big day arrived. She also made a point to take me out to one of my favorite restaurants and let me drink as many margaritas as I needed to. That weekend also marked The Hubs' bachelor party. The one where he got so bombed on tequila shots, he passed out at IHOP at 3am with a piece of bacon still in his mouth. Yep, that one.
Honestly, the week is a blur, even now...lots of last-minute DIY, typical last-minute wedding prep (manicures, tanning, etc, etc...). But the one thing that is honestly worth mentioning in depth before we launch into the wedding weekend itself was the flowers. Or, in other terms, the disaster that the flowers could have been.
When we first started talking wedding details, Hubs and I knew we wanted to do our own flowers. Well, I knew I wanted to do our own flowers, and Hubs went along with it because he trusted me when I said I could do it and when he saw the difference in cold hard cash it would entail (we're talking savings in the quadruple digits here). Neither one of us wanted overly fussy arrangements or for the wedding to look like someone vomited foliage everywhere, so - logistically and financially - it made sense for us to do our own.
We went through wholesale dealers for all of our flowers. We found a company that could do bouquet and boutonniere packages (because, frankly, I didn't want to have to that on top of all the arrangements) and bulk flowers for our centerpieces and other accents. We ended up going with two different companies, because we needed one more bouquet than our original choice could offer us in a package.
The flowers were scheduled to arrive on Thursday morning. Shortly thereafter, Blondie and E were scheduled to arrive at my house to help out with cutting and watering the flowers and getting the arrangements refridgerated. All was running incredibly smoothly. That probably should have been a sign.
The flowers arrived bright and early at 8am. I came downstairs from a shower to see Hubs surrounded by big white boxes. One by one, we opened them. And that's when shit started hitting the fan.
All the bouquets were brown. All the boutonnieres were brown. They were supposed to be white roses, not brown roses. Oh holy fuckballs.
As I open more and more boxes, I am seeing more and more brown roses, and I am getting more and more concerned as to how exactly I'm going to be able to secure a bunch of white flower bouquets from Whole Foods at the last minute to replace them. Thankfully, we got to the bulk flower boxes and found that we had 200 perfectly gorgeous, bright white long stem roses in them. So, all we had to worry about were, well, the flowers people actually had to hold/wear.
I ended up calling both companies, explaining the situation, and they assured me that new, non-brown flowers would be sent the very next day to replace the others. During these conversations, my parents, brother and his girlfriend arrived...I thought my mom was going to pass out. She looked more worried than I was.
After I finished up my phone calls, my brother was just staring at me. I finally asked him what was up, and he said to me, rather incredulously, "why are you being so nice? Why aren't you freaking out right now?" Apparently, rather than my reasonably calm but concerned reaction to Flowerpocalypse 2011, he was expecting something more along the lines of:
Was I worried that the flowers wouldn't arrive on time or wouldn't be the way that Hubs and I had hoped? Sure. Was I about to have an epic meltdown about it? No. First of all, there had been far more serious drama/issues that had happened leading up to the wedding (including, more or less, my entire family having a nuclear breakdown of epic proportions), so this was small fries. Second, at the end of the day, as long as Hubs and I were married, I really didn't give a shit about what my flowers looked like. If I had to walk down the aisle with a $10 white bouquet from Whole Foods, then so be it.
That, and we had something else contributing to my mellow mood.
Don't see it?
That's right. It was five-o-clock somewhere. That somewhere being my kitchen at 8:30am. Sue me.
So, we proceed to unpackage 200 long stem white roses (with thorns, mind you) and put them in the dozen of Home Depot buckets (keeping it klassy, my friends) that I had purchased for that express purpose a week before. I wish I had pictures of the relay system we had going - Blondie and my brother's girlfriend with their hands in the spare bathroom tub cutting stems off, me sitting in the loft hallway surrounded by orange buckets and flowers - but we were too busy trying not to bust up over my brother's incessant Godzilla roars from the downstairs. Apparently, he wanted a show and I just wasn't delivering. Sorry.
Fast forward to the next day, and the new flowers arrive. Our wedding party flowers, which came from the original wholesale company, for the most part, turned out great - snowy white roses, with a few brown tips here and there. A few plucks, and all was well. My bouquet, and our mother's corsages, which came from our late-addition company, were a different story. My bouquet was now ivory (to the point of yellow, ivory) and was brown all over, and the corsages were full of bruised roses. And we have to leave in 15 minutes for our rehearsal. Fuckballs.
And here's where the funny shit started happening.
Of all people in the world, my brother-in-law Evan steps up and says, "let me have a hand at it and see what I can do." At this point, I figure, what the hell, what's the worst he could do at this point? They're already brown and bruised. So, I hand him a pair of scissors, some tape and give him a brief summary of what I had in mind, and off we go to the rehearsal.
Fast forward about four hours later, and my sister and I walking back in our house to get ready for the rehearsal dinner, and our kitchen is full of flowers. And they're all damn near perfect.
Turns out the brother-in-law used to work in a florist shop (surprise!) and he's single-handedly saved the flower day. In the time we were at the rehearsal, he and Mitch (E's husband) took apart my bridal bouquet, built me a new one by taking good flowers from the original brown bouquets. He also built me not one, but two, toss bouquets for the reception, and totally rebuilt the mothers' corsages using the same method.
I seriously couldn't believe it. If he wasn't my sister's husband, I probably would have frenched him.
The morning of the wedding, he shows up at my house (he had crashed with Hubs at his hotel suite while us girls had ourselves a proper slumber party the night before) with Starbucks and says, "I want to play a little more." Given how well his playing yesterday had turned out, I was all for it.
Fast forward to four hours later, and we're all piling back in the house after hair and makeup. I had spent the entire morning throwing up from food poisoning (I wish I was kidding), but we were all coiffed and ready to go. I walk in and my kitchen is full of flowers. Beautiful, perfect flowers.
In the span of that morning, he has de-petaled about half the 200 long stem roses and I've got five buckets of gorgeous white rose petals, layered with damp paper towels. He's set aside and trimmed the fattest blooms for a memorial vase we had planned to set up for the ceremony, and he's got the rest ready to go for centerpieces.
If he wasn't my sister's husband, I would have definitely frenched him and I might have offered to bear his children.
In the end, the flowers really did turn out beautiful. I spent an hour in the dressing room at the venue setting up the centerpieces and other arrangements myself while the girls did their makeup and got ready, and a truckload of friends showed up while Hubs and I took pictures and put them all out for us.
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Our ceremony arrangements - they were down the aisle, on top of white pillars. |
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Bridal party bouquets... |
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Boutonnieres... |
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My bouquet... |
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Cocktail hour table vases... |
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Our ceremony centerpieces... |
And it was all thanks to a kickass wholesale company, some imagination, several trips to Michaels for glassware, and a
Not to mention my personal miracleworker, florist, and the best pretend brother-in-law a girl could ask for. His new official name is Saint Evan. :)
Coming next week...the kickoff to wedding weekend, complete with a little T-Pain.
Nope, not kidding. :)
Intro image courtesy of Claudia Oliver Photography.
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