goldengirl
Brilliant_Rock
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2004
- Messages
- 1,134
To everybody that asked about me, I apologize for leaving you all hanging! Tybee, MelissaSue, and SevensOne - I don't even know if you guys are still around but because of you I am now posting my ridiculously late wedding day thread.
Let me start at the beginning, shall I? This is a long story but actually might explain what happened to me.
December 2005 Kyle proposed, and we set our date for September 9, 2006. In April 2006, my landlady informed me she was going to be selling her property and I would most likely need to find a new place to live. In May, it sold and we sought frantically for a place which would meet our needs (dog-friendly, not too far from our jobs, reasonable rent in a reasonable neighborhood, and willing to let us out of a contract early because it was possible we would be moving out of state in the next year). In June, we moved to that new place and I applied for a job with my company in Louisville, Kentucky. In July, I flew to Louisville to interview, and later was offered that job, so I began looking for a replacement tenant (a stipulation of being released from my lease with no monetary penalty). The weekend before we left, my bridesmaid and I had a major falling-out which involved my sudden realization that I actually didn't matter to her at all and she was probably not going to come to the wedding even though I had paid for her dress and bought her plane ticket - she bailed on my going-away/bachelorette party and she was probably going to bail on the wedding, too. With this in mind, I asked for the dress back and requested that she attend merely as a guest (since she still had the plane ticket, after all). As might be expected, she declined. I asked another friend to step in as a bridesmaid and she readily agreed. On August 9th, we loaded the last of our belongings into the rental truck and began the three-day trek to Kentucky - Kyle driving the Penske which also was towing his car, and my mom and I driving my car.
I started my new job here in Louisville the next Monday, and with just three weeks to go until the wedding, began cramming in those last-minute details (like finding a hairdresser and finishing the alterations on my dress). Between the new job, unpacking my house, and worries about money (Kyle did not yet have a job), I found little time to "stress" about the wedding..... it was just one long "to-do" list which I methodically worked my way through.
My family and our friends started flying in a few days before the wedding and we did lots of normal things that you do with family that you don't see often and who are there to help pull off a low-budget wedding.
Thursday: The flowers came in from freshroses.com so we snipped stems, stripped thorns and stuck 'em in buckets to bloom. The girls, my mom and I had a makeup trial from a suggested makeup artist and did last-minute shopping/DIY tasks (I needed my wedding-day undies, Mom needed shoes, we assembled bathroom baskets, etc). Kyle and I went to dinner with the out-of-towners. My friends and I went out on the town for some drinks, Kyle's friends took him out for his bachelor party. Kyle's mom hemmed my (still unfinished) aisle runner (bless her soul).
Friday: My two bridesmaids (and another friend) and I did the girly mani/pedi treat and enjoyed a girls' lunch out. Tuxes were picked up and words were had with the sales associate because the brothers' tuxes were the wrong color. We did the rehearsal in which people were inordinately concerned about things that I honestly didn't care about, such as which female relative would be walked down the aisle to her seat by which male relative. I began to get a little overwhelmed by ALL THE FREAKING QUESTIONS and Kyle's mom (bless her soul) noticed and took over the handling of the little details. My mom got upset that Kyle's mom always had such nice things to say about me, because HER MIL seldom had nice things to say about HER and why should I have a better MIL than she does??? (And seriously, why doesn't anybody believe the bride when she repeatedly says "I don't care"?)
After the rehearsal we went to Kyle's aunt's house, who was throwing the rehearsal dinner. Lots of good down-home Kentucky cooking, very "cowboy casual" and relaxed and a good time. After THAT, the "bridal SWAT team" (me, my mom, my stepmom, my MIL, my sister, and my two friends from Phoenix) descended upon the MIL's house to put together the bouquets, corsages, boutonnieres, and rose torches. (In lieu of roses in a vase on a stand, we'd purchased two wrought iron tiki torches and removed the oil can; we stuffed florist foam in the area for the oil can and intended to stuff roses all over it to create two free-standing ball-of-flowers-on-a-stick. Essentially.) By 2a.m., I was practically asleep on my feet and we'd completed everything but the rose torches. My wonderful SWAT team sent me home to get some sleep before the Big Day and they completed them without me.
Saturday: Everyone else headed up to the wedding site first thing in the morning to get it set up, and I went to Enterprise to get our rental car. This did not go well. Despite my being excruciatingly clear when I made the reservation ("Hello, I am 23 and I would like to rent a premium vehicle, is that ok?" Them: "Sure, as long as you have a major credit card!" Me: "I have a debit card with a Visa logo, does that count?" Them: "Yep, no problem at all!" Me: "Okay, here is my out-of-state address and out-of-state phone number, thank you!") they refused to rent me the car I'd reserved. I'm apparently not old enough to rent "that level" of vehicle. Okay, fine, I'll take the next level down. Hand them my debit card - they won't accept it, sorry, they can't take debit cards for an out-of-state license, only a CREDIT card will do. That's a problem, as my credit card is pretty much maxed from the move and I kept all my extra money in checking because I didn't KNOW I'd need a credit card for anything. Of course it is rejected, so I call my dad, in tears by this point, because dammit it is MY WEDDING DAY and it's the FIRST THING I AM DOING and it is already going ALL WRONG. He comes down to the center and offers his credit card, which they say is fine, but I am not allowed to drive the car. WTF?!? Sorry, since my card was previously rejected they cannot allow me to drive any of their vehicles. I am ragingly pissed off by this point and I none-too-politely tell them what I think of their less-than-stellar communication skills and inform them I will no longer be in need of their services at this time or AT ANY OTHER TIME IN MY LIFE, thankyouverymuch!! (Bride then leaves in a huff.)
I text Kyle, who is at the wedding site, and ask him please to tell everyone not to ask me about what shall henceforth be known as the Rental Car Fiasco, because I still feel ridiculously upset about it and I don't want to break down any more that day. Then I get myself up to the site and help set up. Good thing, because my rental company had forgotten two tables and a case of plates. There is some general chaos as we scramble to finish before we have to leave for the hairdresser's. I send my bridesmaids and the moms ahead of me as we're not done yet and their appointment time is looming. I bust my butt to finish and then hit the road running.
My hairdresser finishes in the expected amount of time but she's done something weird with my bangs. I ask her to please redo it the way we'd discussed. She does, then I'm in the makeup chair, where this girl takes (I am not kidding) over an HOUR to do my makeup. I'm now running half an hour late, and I still have to stop at home to pick up my dress and I haven't even had a shower yet!! We race like crazy to my house where I spruce up faster than anyone on the planet has ever spruced and then it's off to the parent's hotel to lead them to the wedding site.
I pull up to the wedding site with my guests already milling about outside and my dress in one arm. The ceremony is supposed to start RIGHT NOW and Kyle and I were planning on having some private time before the ceremony for our couple pictures and any desired family shots - no formals are planned and it will be too dark after the ceremony anyway. I definitely don't have time for the boudoir photos, so that idea is scrapped. I throw on my dress in two seconds and meet my soon-to-be husband on the stone terrace at the back of the manor house... and time stops. We spend a few minutes giggling maniacally about the chaos of the day and some of the ridiculous things our collectively crazy family has said or done. We take a few (but not near as many as I wanted) pictures and then send word to start the ceremony music. I am standing in the manor with my bridesmaids and the groomsmen and the one groomsman is watching me carefully, looking terrified that I might suddenly break into tears. I am impatient - how bloody long does it take for three old ladies to be seated?? I suddenly realize I have to pee and I won't make it through the ceremony. I rush into the ladies' room and take care of myself with no help - thank you, yes, I'm talented. I wait some more and then my music starts. I take one arm each of my dad and my stepdad, take a deep breath, say a small prayer not to trip, and start down the path towards the aisle. When we reach the aisle, my dad and stepdad proceed alone and I wait for them to be seated before walking myself down the aisle. I feel a little ridiculous to have so many eyes on me and I have this frazzled refrain in my head that goes something like "smile - don't trip - keep your bouquet down..." I finally reach the head of the aisle and take Kyle's hand, and the butterflies subside enough for me to not care that everyone in the world is watching me.
The ceremony goes smoothly except for a very small slip by Kyle in his vows (he accidentally vowed to love his LIFE forever ) and the fact that although they didn't seem unusual when we read them to ourselves, the vows suddenly seemed to take FOREVER to get through. Then it's over, we kiss, we traipse down the aisle and stuff ourselves into Kyle's pride and joy - the where-exactly-do-you-think-all-this-skirt-is-going-to-go MR2 - and drive down the driveway to give ourselves a breather and allow our guests time to move inside. Kyle can't figure out how to bustle my train so we just take a moment to catch our breath and then head back, where not a single one of our guests have actually gone inside.
The rest of the night was very low-key, everybody wanted to talk to us of course so it went quickly for me. The jazz piano went over like mad and the hors d'oeuvres buffet was awesome, thanks again to Kyle's aunt. We shooed people out at about 11pm and began the cleanup - yes, in my wedding dress - as we had to be out and locked up by midnight. It took a bit longer than expected and the park ranger stalked us until I put on a little charm and apologized profusely for the delay... c'mon, did anybody think he'd give lip to a girl in her wedding dress?? Then Kyle and I and our friends and the photographer went to Steak-n-Shake (a 24-hour diner that serves burgers and milkshakes) and shared some food and some laughs. Overall, a nice evening; it went really quickly and it was an enormous amount of work for the few hours of fun. My first, and lasting, impression is that it was exhausting.
Now, as to why I didn't come back and post photos right away... we had issues with our photographer who avoided our calls and emails for weeks. We finally had to show up at her house (she'd listed it as her business address) and threaten legal action if she did not deliver our photos. (Keep in mind that our contract stated we would receive raw files with no post-processing, as we wanted only the originals and the rights to reproduce them; she'd said she'd have them for us the day after the wedding, as all she had to do was take them off her camera's memory card and burn them onto CDs.) We did finally get our pictures and then understood why she'd been avoiding us... I wish I could say they were just okay, but it would be more honest to say we were both extremely disappointed. She had shown a lot of potential (a new wedding photographer, but all her previous work was exceptional) but she had apparently forgotten the basics of her craft... she'd either forgotten or broken her flash and had tried to make up for it by opening up the lens aperture (which created a very small focal point, and which meant anything outside that focal point was blurry) and increasing the ISO speed (essentially the "film" speed, the camera's sensitivity to light, which also means that the photos were quite grainy). Kyle and I did a lot of work processing these files to try and get some good photos out of them, but most were completely unusable - too blurry, too grainy, or too dark to even be fixed. In the 300+ raw photos we received, I'd say less than 30 are even worth printing... and only a couple are "great" shots. We had an extremely low budget (I think we pulled this off for less than $4k?) but the photos were by far the most important to me.... we couldn't afford an established photographer but we did our best to screen the newbies for someone we thought had potential. I am still pretty upset about it, but trying to remember that I don't need pictures to be married. :/
Let me start at the beginning, shall I? This is a long story but actually might explain what happened to me.
December 2005 Kyle proposed, and we set our date for September 9, 2006. In April 2006, my landlady informed me she was going to be selling her property and I would most likely need to find a new place to live. In May, it sold and we sought frantically for a place which would meet our needs (dog-friendly, not too far from our jobs, reasonable rent in a reasonable neighborhood, and willing to let us out of a contract early because it was possible we would be moving out of state in the next year). In June, we moved to that new place and I applied for a job with my company in Louisville, Kentucky. In July, I flew to Louisville to interview, and later was offered that job, so I began looking for a replacement tenant (a stipulation of being released from my lease with no monetary penalty). The weekend before we left, my bridesmaid and I had a major falling-out which involved my sudden realization that I actually didn't matter to her at all and she was probably not going to come to the wedding even though I had paid for her dress and bought her plane ticket - she bailed on my going-away/bachelorette party and she was probably going to bail on the wedding, too. With this in mind, I asked for the dress back and requested that she attend merely as a guest (since she still had the plane ticket, after all). As might be expected, she declined. I asked another friend to step in as a bridesmaid and she readily agreed. On August 9th, we loaded the last of our belongings into the rental truck and began the three-day trek to Kentucky - Kyle driving the Penske which also was towing his car, and my mom and I driving my car.
I started my new job here in Louisville the next Monday, and with just three weeks to go until the wedding, began cramming in those last-minute details (like finding a hairdresser and finishing the alterations on my dress). Between the new job, unpacking my house, and worries about money (Kyle did not yet have a job), I found little time to "stress" about the wedding..... it was just one long "to-do" list which I methodically worked my way through.
My family and our friends started flying in a few days before the wedding and we did lots of normal things that you do with family that you don't see often and who are there to help pull off a low-budget wedding.
Thursday: The flowers came in from freshroses.com so we snipped stems, stripped thorns and stuck 'em in buckets to bloom. The girls, my mom and I had a makeup trial from a suggested makeup artist and did last-minute shopping/DIY tasks (I needed my wedding-day undies, Mom needed shoes, we assembled bathroom baskets, etc). Kyle and I went to dinner with the out-of-towners. My friends and I went out on the town for some drinks, Kyle's friends took him out for his bachelor party. Kyle's mom hemmed my (still unfinished) aisle runner (bless her soul).
Friday: My two bridesmaids (and another friend) and I did the girly mani/pedi treat and enjoyed a girls' lunch out. Tuxes were picked up and words were had with the sales associate because the brothers' tuxes were the wrong color. We did the rehearsal in which people were inordinately concerned about things that I honestly didn't care about, such as which female relative would be walked down the aisle to her seat by which male relative. I began to get a little overwhelmed by ALL THE FREAKING QUESTIONS and Kyle's mom (bless her soul) noticed and took over the handling of the little details. My mom got upset that Kyle's mom always had such nice things to say about me, because HER MIL seldom had nice things to say about HER and why should I have a better MIL than she does??? (And seriously, why doesn't anybody believe the bride when she repeatedly says "I don't care"?)
After the rehearsal we went to Kyle's aunt's house, who was throwing the rehearsal dinner. Lots of good down-home Kentucky cooking, very "cowboy casual" and relaxed and a good time. After THAT, the "bridal SWAT team" (me, my mom, my stepmom, my MIL, my sister, and my two friends from Phoenix) descended upon the MIL's house to put together the bouquets, corsages, boutonnieres, and rose torches. (In lieu of roses in a vase on a stand, we'd purchased two wrought iron tiki torches and removed the oil can; we stuffed florist foam in the area for the oil can and intended to stuff roses all over it to create two free-standing ball-of-flowers-on-a-stick. Essentially.) By 2a.m., I was practically asleep on my feet and we'd completed everything but the rose torches. My wonderful SWAT team sent me home to get some sleep before the Big Day and they completed them without me.
Saturday: Everyone else headed up to the wedding site first thing in the morning to get it set up, and I went to Enterprise to get our rental car. This did not go well. Despite my being excruciatingly clear when I made the reservation ("Hello, I am 23 and I would like to rent a premium vehicle, is that ok?" Them: "Sure, as long as you have a major credit card!" Me: "I have a debit card with a Visa logo, does that count?" Them: "Yep, no problem at all!" Me: "Okay, here is my out-of-state address and out-of-state phone number, thank you!") they refused to rent me the car I'd reserved. I'm apparently not old enough to rent "that level" of vehicle. Okay, fine, I'll take the next level down. Hand them my debit card - they won't accept it, sorry, they can't take debit cards for an out-of-state license, only a CREDIT card will do. That's a problem, as my credit card is pretty much maxed from the move and I kept all my extra money in checking because I didn't KNOW I'd need a credit card for anything. Of course it is rejected, so I call my dad, in tears by this point, because dammit it is MY WEDDING DAY and it's the FIRST THING I AM DOING and it is already going ALL WRONG. He comes down to the center and offers his credit card, which they say is fine, but I am not allowed to drive the car. WTF?!? Sorry, since my card was previously rejected they cannot allow me to drive any of their vehicles. I am ragingly pissed off by this point and I none-too-politely tell them what I think of their less-than-stellar communication skills and inform them I will no longer be in need of their services at this time or AT ANY OTHER TIME IN MY LIFE, thankyouverymuch!! (Bride then leaves in a huff.)
I text Kyle, who is at the wedding site, and ask him please to tell everyone not to ask me about what shall henceforth be known as the Rental Car Fiasco, because I still feel ridiculously upset about it and I don't want to break down any more that day. Then I get myself up to the site and help set up. Good thing, because my rental company had forgotten two tables and a case of plates. There is some general chaos as we scramble to finish before we have to leave for the hairdresser's. I send my bridesmaids and the moms ahead of me as we're not done yet and their appointment time is looming. I bust my butt to finish and then hit the road running.
My hairdresser finishes in the expected amount of time but she's done something weird with my bangs. I ask her to please redo it the way we'd discussed. She does, then I'm in the makeup chair, where this girl takes (I am not kidding) over an HOUR to do my makeup. I'm now running half an hour late, and I still have to stop at home to pick up my dress and I haven't even had a shower yet!! We race like crazy to my house where I spruce up faster than anyone on the planet has ever spruced and then it's off to the parent's hotel to lead them to the wedding site.
I pull up to the wedding site with my guests already milling about outside and my dress in one arm. The ceremony is supposed to start RIGHT NOW and Kyle and I were planning on having some private time before the ceremony for our couple pictures and any desired family shots - no formals are planned and it will be too dark after the ceremony anyway. I definitely don't have time for the boudoir photos, so that idea is scrapped. I throw on my dress in two seconds and meet my soon-to-be husband on the stone terrace at the back of the manor house... and time stops. We spend a few minutes giggling maniacally about the chaos of the day and some of the ridiculous things our collectively crazy family has said or done. We take a few (but not near as many as I wanted) pictures and then send word to start the ceremony music. I am standing in the manor with my bridesmaids and the groomsmen and the one groomsman is watching me carefully, looking terrified that I might suddenly break into tears. I am impatient - how bloody long does it take for three old ladies to be seated?? I suddenly realize I have to pee and I won't make it through the ceremony. I rush into the ladies' room and take care of myself with no help - thank you, yes, I'm talented. I wait some more and then my music starts. I take one arm each of my dad and my stepdad, take a deep breath, say a small prayer not to trip, and start down the path towards the aisle. When we reach the aisle, my dad and stepdad proceed alone and I wait for them to be seated before walking myself down the aisle. I feel a little ridiculous to have so many eyes on me and I have this frazzled refrain in my head that goes something like "smile - don't trip - keep your bouquet down..." I finally reach the head of the aisle and take Kyle's hand, and the butterflies subside enough for me to not care that everyone in the world is watching me.
The ceremony goes smoothly except for a very small slip by Kyle in his vows (he accidentally vowed to love his LIFE forever ) and the fact that although they didn't seem unusual when we read them to ourselves, the vows suddenly seemed to take FOREVER to get through. Then it's over, we kiss, we traipse down the aisle and stuff ourselves into Kyle's pride and joy - the where-exactly-do-you-think-all-this-skirt-is-going-to-go MR2 - and drive down the driveway to give ourselves a breather and allow our guests time to move inside. Kyle can't figure out how to bustle my train so we just take a moment to catch our breath and then head back, where not a single one of our guests have actually gone inside.
The rest of the night was very low-key, everybody wanted to talk to us of course so it went quickly for me. The jazz piano went over like mad and the hors d'oeuvres buffet was awesome, thanks again to Kyle's aunt. We shooed people out at about 11pm and began the cleanup - yes, in my wedding dress - as we had to be out and locked up by midnight. It took a bit longer than expected and the park ranger stalked us until I put on a little charm and apologized profusely for the delay... c'mon, did anybody think he'd give lip to a girl in her wedding dress?? Then Kyle and I and our friends and the photographer went to Steak-n-Shake (a 24-hour diner that serves burgers and milkshakes) and shared some food and some laughs. Overall, a nice evening; it went really quickly and it was an enormous amount of work for the few hours of fun. My first, and lasting, impression is that it was exhausting.
Now, as to why I didn't come back and post photos right away... we had issues with our photographer who avoided our calls and emails for weeks. We finally had to show up at her house (she'd listed it as her business address) and threaten legal action if she did not deliver our photos. (Keep in mind that our contract stated we would receive raw files with no post-processing, as we wanted only the originals and the rights to reproduce them; she'd said she'd have them for us the day after the wedding, as all she had to do was take them off her camera's memory card and burn them onto CDs.) We did finally get our pictures and then understood why she'd been avoiding us... I wish I could say they were just okay, but it would be more honest to say we were both extremely disappointed. She had shown a lot of potential (a new wedding photographer, but all her previous work was exceptional) but she had apparently forgotten the basics of her craft... she'd either forgotten or broken her flash and had tried to make up for it by opening up the lens aperture (which created a very small focal point, and which meant anything outside that focal point was blurry) and increasing the ISO speed (essentially the "film" speed, the camera's sensitivity to light, which also means that the photos were quite grainy). Kyle and I did a lot of work processing these files to try and get some good photos out of them, but most were completely unusable - too blurry, too grainy, or too dark to even be fixed. In the 300+ raw photos we received, I'd say less than 30 are even worth printing... and only a couple are "great" shots. We had an extremely low budget (I think we pulled this off for less than $4k?) but the photos were by far the most important to me.... we couldn't afford an established photographer but we did our best to screen the newbies for someone we thought had potential. I am still pretty upset about it, but trying to remember that I don't need pictures to be married. :/