Zoo Wedding

[Faerievert]

Sorry, I''m not posting any pics yet, I hope to go through them tomorrow. But my official photographer has a bunch of hers up at http://www.marylizphotography.com/pittenger.html

And now for my story...

 

[Faerievert]

Before the wedding:

My journey started more than a week before the wedding. On Tuesday May 23 I left my parents house and flew to Rochester to be with Billy for graduation. That Wednesday I had my bachelorette party, Thursday his family got in, Saturday was the ceremony, Sunday his family headed back to AL, and Monday we finally drove down to Louisville. Billy spent the first night at the hotel with me, then went down to drop the rest of his stuff with his family.
And this is where the story really starts. The hotel is under construction! They had told us they were remodeling when we booked the block in the fall, but said it would be done by Derby day in early May, so no worries. Well, I guess they fell behind somewhere, because things were majority being worked on. The pool was drained and had people working on re-doing it. One entire hall was torn apart, no carpet or anything. There were constantly painters in one hall or another. One wing of the third floor was in the process of being changed over to the new furniture & carpeting in the rooms. The night we came in, the bottom steps of the grand staircase were unfinished (they put the last of the carpet on those Tuesday morning, whew!). All that said, the staff was amazing and things worked out great with the hotel. The rooms for our guests, though as of yet unrenovated, were still very nice. All the workers were very curtious, and they didn''t make a racket in the early morning (it was mostly very quiet work being done anyway).
My mom was supposed to fly in on Tuesday evening. Well there were all these crazy thunderstorms across the midwest, so she was delayed and ended up having to spend the night in O''Hare WITH MY WEDDING GOWN IN HER CARRY-ON!!! This is why we didn''t check it! She didn''t really get any sleep, and stood around standby on a bunch of flights. They issued her a ticket to Lexington (an hour and a half drive from louisville) for the next afternoon, but she would be in too late to bring me my dress for my bridal portrait session on Wednesday. She ended up getting a standby seat on an early morning flight to Lexington and drove in just in time to drop me off at the hair salon for my photo shoot. Luckily, I''d already arranged with my awesome photographer MaryLiz that my mom could just drop me off at the salon and she would take care of driving me to her place for the photos and back to the hotel when we finished. I was a little out of it at the salon (and forgot to tip my stylist as a result, oops), but MaryLiz was nice and ran to a shop and got me a sandwich (I''d missed lunch with all the excitement of trying to get there on time). It was fun getting all done up. I gave heavy eye make-up one more try, and as much as I like it, it really was too much for a wedding. But I get a few pictures with the super-smokey look I''d wanted. I compromised on the blood red lips I''d been going for and decided on a more purple hue instead. Still dark, but more flattering. The hair was perfect. It had to be set in rollers for about 20 minutes, then unrolled, the top teased, the front pulled back, the barrette bobby pinned into place because it was too heavy to stay put on its own, then the front smoothed over the teasing. It looked ridiculous until she finally smoothed out the front. The result is better than I had ever hoped for. It was hair-sprayed for staying power, but not sticky or crunchy. It was absolutely perfect. My hairdresser was this cool goth chick lady. She''s the owner, she started the salon when she was 21, and now she''s in her 30''s. The other customers the day of my trial were a total mix. One 20-ish gal with dark hair had her bangs bleached and then dyed hot pink. A very normal looking 40-ish woman had her beautiful long golden hair washed and blown straight. A 30-ish gal was getting standard highlights. And this totally funky goth guy wearing 8 inch platform shoes was getting his spiky black hair trimmed.
So after the hair/make-up trial, MaryLiz took me back to her house for the photo shoot. She''s got the upper 2 stories of an house, with a rather creepy weird older couple living on the 1st floor. You have to take a really long staircase up to her door, but the place is pretty cute inside. The only problem was she''s got 3 cats right now. She''s had 1 for a while, but it was lonely so she bought a kitten 2 weeks ago, and then last week she ended up with one of her boyfriend''s late mother''s cats after it ran away from his place down the street and was found near her house. Now I love cats, and they were all very sweet, but we had to keep them away from my lace wedding gown! That little kitten was only about 6 weeks old and a real trouble maker. We kept trying to keep him downstairs by blocking off the stairway with a big bamboo screen, but he knocked it down and came rushing up. She tried locking him in the closet in her bedroom upstairs with us, but my dress was hanging on the door, so we put a chair in front of it to keep the door closed, which he managed to push out and come awfully close to my dress. So he finally got locked in the tiny downstairs bathroom that could be fully latched closed with no escape routes. So he cried and cried. It was the first time she''d been home but not paying attention too him. He was jealous I guess. Good thing he was so adorable! We''d managed to get her lights and tripod set up in her bedroom with some nice white sheets over her bed to do my lingerie shoot. I haven''t seen the pictures from that yet, but she says they turned out really well. She''s got to mail me the CD, but I want to wait until we move out of the in-laws house so it can''t get mixed up with any of their cds of pictures!!! We also did a few pics of me in my dress, but I was exhausted by that point so they didn''t turn out real great. We took a few in her living room with a white sheet tacked up on the wall for a backdrop, and a few out in a local park. The sun was so bright I could barely keep my eyes open to look at the camera, and I could feel sweat dripping down my back from the 90 degree heat and sticky humidity. So the official bridal portraits were a bit of a bust, but it was a lot of fun doing the lingerie shoot. She dropped me off and got her first look at the grand staircase where we''d do the formal pics on Saturday. Then I ran off to dinner at Bob Evans across the parking lot with my mom and her friends that were housing all our wedding stuff in their attic. I changed into casual cloths, but I still had my hair and make-up done up all fancy. The other customers must have thought I looked ridiculous! We went over to their place after dinner to grab some of the stuff to work on the next day, like the card box and guest book that needed to be finished, and all the stuff from oriental trading company that we hadn''t seen in person yet.
Thursday was busy. I insisted on going to the gym in the hotel for a while after breakfast, so mom went back to the room and ironed her skirt for the rehearsal, the wraps for the bridesmaids, and my dress. She brought a thin kitchen towel to put between it and the iron. I didn''t see her working on it, but she said it was really easy actually. She did the lining, then the satin, then the lace and it only took her 15 minutes. Going to the cleaners to have it pressed would have been such a waste of money. I ran around with mom in the morning to order the lunch trays for the salon at kroger and meet with our caterer Ryan at the zoo. He rocks. My mom was supposed to drop his check off on Wednesday, but she just went back to the hotel and crashed after she dropped me off. She called him, and he was fine with getting it at our meeting Thursday. Well after we went over the dinner menu and timeline and table set-up, we left without giving him the check! ooops. So we called and said we''d just walk it over to his home base, the restaurant on the other side of the zoo. So we walked across looking at the animals and found him to give him the check. We still needed lunch, so we got some there. apparently you get free pizza when you write the manager a $2000 check I even got a drink in a plastic collectors glass that I used to keep my bouquet watered after the wedding. That afternoon Billy and his parents and brothers came in, and so did a few of our friends. So my mom got to meet his parents for the first time and we all went out to dinner together at Tumbleweeds. It''s a southwestern steakhouse place and it was really good. I chose well We got back and I kept trying to finish up my ''homework'' - the table cards, place-cards, programs, playlists. The moms kept bugging me to get it done, and then would go and keep talking to me! How am I supposed to finish when you won''t leave me alone! They did the same thing friday night. We did get the guest-book and card box finished though. They turned out really well. I had been very worried that they guys who''d come in already would take billy out and get him totally smashed Thursday night, but he didn''t feel good when he came home from the steakhouse (possibly having to do with the 42 ounce margarita he drank and having totally overeaten- he didn''t even have room for the yummy ice-cream in a pastry bowl our waitress surprised us with after the checks. she was really nice woman of about 40, I guess she''d been with a guy for several years, and they finally got engaged last year, but he died not too long ago this year before they got married so she had a lot of cherish every moment sort of advice for us, in a good way, not a mopey sob story kind of way). So he hung out in the hotel- he had an adjoining room to the best man. While he was down there, I was trying to finish stuff. We walked down to the lobby to get brochures to put in the OOT bags, and I get a call from my MOH. The big thunderstorms that caused my mom a problem had essentially shut down the newark airport. She''d called earlier and told me she was delayed. But now her and her sister weren''t going to make it. They were totally freaked out after missing their connection and they couldn''t get a seat on anything for days. They didn''t know to ask about cincinnati or lexington, and the agents were all so hammered with passengers they weren''t much help. So they ended up on a flight back to Florida. They sat on the plane waiting in line to leave for hours. Yuck. Honestly, finding out they weren''t coming just made me go numb. Everything already felt like it was falling apart, and this was just, like, well that''s it, nothing more can possibly go wrong now. It was probably better they weren''t there anyway. Billy''s friends had gotten to really hate them, and she''d only been a replacement bridesmaid originally, she was upgraded to MOH because she offered to throw me a bachelorette party. It just would have been drama with the guys if they''d come. I got my party, and we''ll mail them the presents they should have gotten at the rehearsal. So I didn''t really have a MOH anymore. I ended up letting Jen stand in that spot with the bigger bouquet because her boyfriend was best man. But I took Naomi & Alicia out of the program and didn''t label anyone as my new MOH in it. I hadn''t ever really wanted to select one in the first place, and I wasn''t very close to any of the girls, so this wasn''t as big a deal for me as it would have been for most people. I knew that the best man and his girlfriend were in town already, and that was enough for me - if no one else made it, I would be fine. By the end of the evening I was totally stressed out from trying to get my stuff done and with losing those girls I was just totally wanting to break down. I was exhausted and ended up calling my mom while she was at the airport picking up my dad & brother and telling her I was going to crash down in Billy''s room for the night instead of staying in the double I had with her. My dad and brother were sharing a separate double that night. She said she wasn''t surprised.
I got up Friday morning with lots of work still to be done. My bridesmaid who was supposed to be driving in overnight hadn''t come in yet, and I needed to redo my seating chart yet again to compensate for the lost guests. During the day, all the guys who''d made it to town so far went to get their tuxes. I guess a few had to be switched around because they didn''t fit, his brother''s vest hadn''t shown up so they had to have it overnighted, and all the guys except billy had plain red ties instead of striped. But that looked fine actually, cuz otherwise he wasn''t going to have anything different about his outfit. I worked as fast as I could to finish up my OOT bag letter, then went to kinkos with the mom''s to have it printed. I ended up forgetting to put the directions from the hotel to the zoo on it, but it''s super easy and a lot of people were carpooling so only a couple people had to be given the directions. Everyone got to the wedding fine, so it was no big deal. My groomsman''s flight got in and we picked him up on the way back to the hotel. So we got him in his room, a double which he was going to share with the son of a friend of the family who came to the wedding, but wasn''t feeling well and I don''t know if he ended up in that room or his parents. I then went and worked on my place-cards some more. I had done them all back in Cali before I''d left, but then the guest list kept getting last minute changes. I think I redid them about 4 times, plus once while I was in Rochester I totally redesigned them and had to redo all of them, the seating changes only effected certain tables but it was still a real pain and kept me from doing the table chart to tell people where they were seated. This is when the mom''s are doing the OOT bags. We put in brochures for the zoo, mints, my letter, crayons, little puzzle books, and I''m not sure if anything else went into them. Another of Billy''s groomsmen flew in and got picked up right before the rehearsal. At some point Kelsey (the BM) got in, driven by our friend Mary. The final groomsman was still driving in when we got to the zoo. First I had to figure out the sound system and get my laptop and it to the right volume levels. Which was a problem at first, but it turned out I had one of the plugs in wrong and we were using the wrong knob to do the system volume. So it was about 5:30 before the rehearsal got under way. It hadn''t occurred to me that losing the MOH would screw up my processional, so I had to come up with a new one on the spot. As in they were asking what order everyone was supposed to be in and I finally told them that since jen was tallest and dating the best man, she might as well be opposite him. Plus the one guy wasn''t there yet, so we had billy''s youngest brother stand in for him. So our processional ended up being like this:
Before we started, my grandmothers were seated up by the dance floor. When it was time to start, Jared (youngest Pittenger brother) walked his grandmother in to her spot up front. Derek (middle Pittenger brother) walks his mom to unity candle and to seat. Dan, my brother, walks my mom to unity candle then to seat. Then the Minister, followed by the Groom and Best Man walked in. This was Chris (an usher) queue to hit the music. ''The Rose'' by Bette Midler starts. Kelsey walks in on Pete''s arm (the groomsman not in the original rehearsal). Chris sneaks back in through the doors, and Brad walks in with Michelle on his arm (the groomsmaid & bridesman). Jen (substitute MOH) walks in on Oz''s arm (groomsman who is now unpaired). Chris walks to door with FG Rowen, who successfully carries her basket to the front to stand with her mom Michelle the groomsmaid. We hadn''t put the petals in the basket yet, so she didn''t get to practice that part. Then I walk in on my dad''s arm. Uncle Gary (the minister) goes over the basics of the ceremony, but we don''t really rehearse saying anything. Then we give the recessional a try. It ends up being:
When Gary ''announces'' us at the end, it''s Chris''s queue to hit play on ''The Lion Sleeps Tonight'' by the Tokens. After Gary''s done speaking, I steal back my bouquet from MOH and walk out on Billy''s arm. Jen (MOH) gets to be the pimp and walk out with best man her boyfriend Dave on one arm, and groomsman Oz on the other. Kelsey walks out on Pete''s arm. Michelle walks out on Brad''s arm with Rowen.
At the very very end of the rehearsal, Pete makes it to the Zoo with the 2 kegs of home-brew raspberry beer he was making us to give away at the reception. That''s handed over to the caterer, and we head back to the hotel. We stand around waiting for a bit in the dining room before dinner, wondering how to seat ourselves- they made one giant long table to seat 30 instead of 5 tables of 6 Kathy thought they were doing. Billy and I end up about 2/3 of the way down on one side. Most of our friends are at the far end. Basically how we end up seated doesn''t make any sense, but dinner is delicious. There''s plenty extra, so all friends who''ve made it to town but weren''t invited to dinner get to come and have some. Rowan gets to go outside and feed the ducks and geese for a while with the dinner rolls. Dessert was unbelievably amazing devils food cake. Guys are given monogrammed tankards, my gals are given earrings and wraps. Turns out Kelsey doesn''t have pieced ears, so I get to keep her earrings. Billy''s brothers are given cufflinks with their initials instead of tankards, they are minors after all. Billy''s friends gather with him in the bar for his bachelor party. They are all repeatedly warned that I will kill them if they get him drunk, and that I will not marry him tomorrow if he does. I drop by the party after it moves downstairs, just as they''re heading out. The guys rented a limo for the evening (good move) and as I find out a few days later, they had a great time and no he did not get drunk. Good thing! I go back to my room with jen & michelle & rowen and try to finish my playlists. Jen keeps bugging me to go with her for a bit. She seems to be mad at Dave, but I don''t know why. After I get most of the way through the playlists, I relent and agree to go out for 1 hour, hoping to finish when I return, or be in early enough to do it in the morning. We take the hotel shuttle to some bar. We had fun, sang ''material girl'' karaoke, and I had 3 drinks. First a blueberry vodka - sweet tea concoction that was the daily special, then orange juice with mango rum (one of my favorites), then a rum & diet coke (the usual when I''m with Jen). I was trying to leave after 2 cuz the hour was about up, but she kept begging me to stay and have another. I agree to have a 3rd drink if the nice guys next to us at the bar buy it, which they do, and call for the shuttle when I get my drink. That gives me 15 minutes to finish it before he comes. Jen refuses to leave, and I program the hotel # into her phone because she insists she can''t find the shuttle''s calling card (I already have the hotel in my phone book from planning). She drinks more than I do, and there''s no use fighting with her, so I head home. I find out the next day she stayed out til about 3am. She was supposed to be back before her boyfriend, but he comes back from the bachelor party to find her missing, calls her, takes the shuttle to pick her up somewhere (not the same bar I left her at), where she''s crying on the floor and still refuses to leave. He literally carries her back to the hotel and their room. She''s fine in the morning and never says anything to me about it. She had begged me not to tell her boyfriend that she''d stayed out without me, so I tried to avoid admitting it to billy when he called and asked me about it on Saturday morning, but when he told me what he knew from dave, it was perfectly obvious that they knew I wasn''t with her, and that she was too drunk to remember threatening me not to tell. I get back to the hotel rather drunk, take a shower, and head to bed ready to get up by 8am to finish my work.

 

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The big day:

On Saturday morning I wake at 5:30am very very sick. I feel like I''m going to puke so I get up and run to the bathroom. I don''t throw up, but end up on the toilet with diarrhea for hours. After trying and failing to go back to bed and only getting maybe 20 minutes before I''m forced back to the bathroom, around 7 I still feel so nauseated I force myself to throw up, hoping it will make me feel better. It doesn''t, and I''m still on the toilet at 8 when my alarm goes off. Again I puke, but without having to force it and I feel a little better. I head down to breakfast. The wonderful people who work the restaurant try to wish me a happy wedding day, but see immediately that something is wrong. I tell them I''m sick, and they leave me alone. I go get some ice water and corn flakes, which I proceed to eat a flake at a time. The guy on duty (he''s such a sweetheart) comes over and asks if there''s anything he can get for me. He offers some advil, probably assuming I''m just hung over. I ask if they''ve got any pepto, and he comes back a few minutes later with some pepto pills and a few advil. I take the pepto and head back to my room. I''d seem a few people at breakfast, and someone lets my mom know. She comes down to my room and offers to get me some immodium. She says my dad was sick last night, so I probably got it from him. I get to work on my stuff and she comes back soon. The immodium works wonders. I work as fast as I can, and there''s isn''t much left to do. I decide that I want to stay in the room to regroup, letting my gals and moms go to the salon without me. Knowing I have another hour, I slow down and finish in plenty of time to go shower and catch a ride to the salon with my dad & uncle. I don''t bother stopping at kinkos on the way because MaryLiz (did I mention how much she rocks?) offers to swing over there and get the last stuff printed for me while I''m being done. My coming over late doesn''t slow things down at salon at all. There''s a veggie tray and sandwich tray and orange juice for the gals to work on while they''re waiting for me to finish. The moms are done first and head to the zoo just as I''m arriving at the salon. I instructed that the gals each have their hair pulled back and pinned up. They each get a very different, but very pretty do. Everyone has their make-up done as well. I don''t think Michelle was very happy with how she looked, but I liked it, it just wasn''t as nice as the other gals ended up with I guess. Plus, the salon is very kid friendly (the owner has 2 younguns of her own, and another stylist regularly brings her little boy in, so they have a kids room in the back with toys and stuff). Rowan has a great time, and gets to have her hair and make-up done too. I''d hoped she could, but didn''t know if she''d like it. Apparently she loves getting done up, so it was great. MaryLiz comes back from Kinkos and gets back to snapping shots of me getting done up. When we finish, we head back to the hotel to get dressed, which only takes a couple minutes since we just have to zip into our dresses and put on shoes. I send MaryLiz down to take pics of the guys getting ready, and she goes down to Billy''s room. He apparently answers the door in just his boxers! (he thought the knock on the door was his brother bringing him his cufflinks - Derek in the mean time was forced to stay in the hall while I fetched those and handed them out around the door so he couldn''t see me). They''re obviously not ready for her, so she checks back in with me, and heads to the lobby to set up for the formal shoot. The guys get ready, and head to the lobby to do some pics with just them (getting bouts on and such). Somewhere in here is where Amanda & Trish swing by my room. I was so happy they made it! My mom was confused that I knew who they were, seeing as how we never met before. I told her ''that''s why we''re always posting pictures!'' They head back to the lobby, and soon we decide it''s time for me to make my entrance. I''d told MaryLiz I''d sneak upstairs so she could take pics of me coming down to see the groom for the first time. Just as we''re headed to the back stairs, the guys come walking down the hall! Luckily, everyone was standing in front of me, and I get shoved back in the room before they see me. We send the boys back to the lobby, and the girls head upstairs, the moms go to the lobby. We line up just before the opening of the stairs. I think I sent Michelle & Rowen down first, the Jen, then Kelsey. Things start getting blurry at this point. We go down one at a time. I head down the stairs, and my moment with billy isn''t exactly picture perfect- he''s at the bottom of the stairs, but on his cell phone calling back to the guys who''d snuck back to the room to get back for more pictures! How ironic, he sees me for the first time and smiles, and there he is, just chatting away on the phone as I make my grand entrance! We take a zillion grouped pictures, on the grand staircase and then outside. The 3 Model A Fords are ready and waiting to take us to the Zoo. We let some of our friends ride, so it takes 2 trips to get everyone. Billy & I wait for the second trip with a few people. It was relaxing really, waiting there just talking with friends. Billy got to ride over in the rumble seat of the coupe. I rode in the back of the Ford Model A Towncar, I wanted to ride in the largest seat by myself to have plenty of room for the dress so it wouldn''t be messed up before the ceremony. Mary hopped in the front of my car because she was heading over just as we were. She was going to drive, but we got to her hop a ride and get picked up at the end of the night by the hotel shuttle (it did 1 or 2 trips at the end of the night to get our friends so it didn''t matter that they''d been drinking the free home-brew and champaign punch.
MaryLiz rides ahead and takes pics as we unload from the cars. Billy thankfully thought to come let me out of my car (I wasn''t going to be able to open the door from the inside, and I needed help climbing down). We all get out and she snaps pics as we walk down from the entrance to the Gheens room. I go hide in the kids room and I think everyone else might have mingled for a few minutes before we got started cuz they weren''t in there with me! I get some pics putting on my garter (which falls off just as the FG is walking down the aisle! I shake it off my foot real quick before I head down!). The FG is in there playing and eyeing the bouquets. She asked my mom if she could have one. Well, we did have an extra one because we were down a girl, so we told her she could carry a baby''s breath bouquet. She played with the basket some more, and it seemed like she''d take that, but in the end, she really wanted the bouquet. It was so cute hearing her asking if she could have it We all got lined up finally, but Chris was no where to be found. He was supposed to be running the music on the laptop, and I had to make sure he knew what to do, now that I''d fixed the playlists from the night before. They find him, and Billy starts telling him what to do, but it''s wrong! I have my one bridezilla moment and yell at billy to stop telling him what to do because because he doesn''t know himself. Billy as it turns out is just telling chris what his mother told him. Poor boy felt bad for making me mad. I finally get a hold of chris, straighten out the timing (the music CANNOT start until the minister & groom have gone in, the song isn''t long enough for the mothers to walk in to it too. I believe my enya was still playing until Chris hit play on the processional.
Everyone processed in perfectly. The ceremony was wonderful. I was afraid Billy would drop my ring, he had a little trouble getting it on my finger. He was sweating so badly, it was running down his face throughout the ceremony. I wanted to reach up and wipe it off of him during the final rather long prayer. I almost did, but I thought it would make Gary the minister break out laughing. I had put my mother''s wedding handkerchief in my cleavage. I used it on him after the processional. Haven''t you always wanted to pull a handkerchief out of your cleavage and wipe the brow of your sweaty hunk ? The Unity candle was a little fussy getting lit, but everything about the ceremony went perfectly. Gary had written in ''You may kiss the bride'' into his ceremony just for us, and it was perfect too. I didn''t want to stop! Chris turned the recessional on right on queue and by the time we reached the door the guests had recognized the song and started cracking up
The wedding party went down to ride the carousel after the ceremony, just like I''d wanted since I first saw that the zoo had one. I had billy bustle my dress real quick as it only had 2 buttons, 1 on the satin layer, 1 on the lace. We took some candids on the way to the front of the zoo. I was afraid they''d try to charge us to ride, but the kid in the ticket booth waived us through no problem. There were kids on the ride with us, but we all got together on the one side and it was great. Billy picked out a lion to ride (the outside ring is different zoo animals that don''t go up and down, the 2 inside rings are normal horses that do move). I hop on the cheetah behind his side saddle, so as not to mess up my dress. Pete got on the panda behind me, and the rest climbed up on the horses. I think all three of the other gals rode side saddle too, but their dresses weren''t at risk of getting caught on the moving horses. MaryLiz snapped pics as we went round and round. We only did one ride and headed back. We made sure to go visit the penguin room downstairs first, and got some good pictures on the fake rocks that landscaped the room.
We went back upstairs and started the buffet line. Dinner was great. We had a short toast by the best man, after which billy''s dad wanted to toast as well, which is exactly what I didn''t want happening. I told him the same thing I''d told dave, ''make it clean and short''! After dinner we worked the room talking to all the tables before the cake cutting. For that we first fed each other the bride & groom strawberry toppers, then cut a slice to leave at my place setting for later. I was in charge of the music once we''d come back upstairs. That all went fine. Not that anyone danced...not that I really expected them to. His family has never danced at a wedding- they usually do the baptist church hall pot luck kind of deals. Everyone enjoyed the food and had a good time chatting and visiting. We managed to pull off doing the Honeymoon dance (aka dollar dance) and racked in way more money from it than I expected (mostly from his parent, but even without their top dollar gifts it was still beyond my expectations). The only thing that went ''wrong'' at the wedding itself was my forgetting to bring the tool-belt for billy to wear for the dollar dance. I had an apron, and I wanted him to wear a tool-belt, but I left it back at the hotel in my suitcase. It would have been cute, but really only me and mom know it was left out. After the dollar dance I started not feeling so good. I had been drinking champaign punch which may have been a bad idea considering how I felt that morning. We''d opened up the chocolate fountain after the cake cutting, and I only got a bite of it - half a nutter butter if I remember correctly, because the smell of it made me feel sick. I insisted on eating on a bite of my fabulous angel-food chocolate ganache wedding cake, which was so rich I almost got sick right then. Billy had started getting me waters instead of punch. We went around and socialized with our friends some more. Trish and Amanda managed get me and everyone else up there to do the Macarena. A bunch of people had already left by then. It all got to be too much with the smell of the chocolate and people and punch and stuff. So I hid out in the kids room with Billy for a few minutes sometime after 9 and ended up ditching out back to the hotel at about 9:30 PM. I think our friends caught shuttle back to the hotel for the after-party down in adjoining rooms. they brought back the rest of the keg and filled the tub with ice and everyone just hung and had a great time. I even saw some pics of them playing beer pong on the desks! They stayed out of trouble and no one was hurt and nothing was damaged, so it''s all good. Billy and I got a ride back in the same Towncar I had taken to the zoo. We were both tired, but not so much to spoil having a fun wedding night

The day after:

We were good and got up early Sunday to enjoy breakfast with all our guests at the hotel. We headed down at 8 am, ate with his grandmother, then after most people were there, decided to do a gift opening. His brothers brought all our stuff down on a luggage trolley and piled it up behind us. We opened all the gifts, and the cards while my mom wrote down who gave what for our thank you list. It was a lot of fun, and we tried to make sure everyone who came down there got a hug, especially the high dollar checks! We got a decent number of physical presents for it being a destination wedding, a few gift cards, and a lot more cash and checks than we''d imagined. Maybe we just had low expectations, but we had no idea we would get that much. We''re not getting rich off of it, but we''ll have plenty for the king sized bed I''m insisting that we purchase as soon as we have a place of our own! plus some left over to work on what''s left on our registries.
Afterwards, I napped for a bit, and they found out I needed to resort everything quick so I could send the stuff I didn''t need for the honeymoon back with his parents before they left. I thought I had til that night, totally forgetting that they were leaving that afternoon. So I was tossing through everything as fast as I could while hanging out with Brad, who was still in town. Billy''s family and my family and brad were all in the room for a while- good thing we had a big room! They packed everything up into their expedition and headed by to AL. Then me and billy and brad and dan ran out to rally''s for some late lunch and dropped brad at the hotel. I finally checked my email for the first time in days and worked on repacking the stuff I had left. Billy took a nap. I had really wanted to go to the zoo and see the half I hadn''t gotten to in all our visits for wedding stuff, but he was totally wiped out. So I''m kinda bummed about that. We ended up going to the house of the people who provided 2 of the 3 model A''s and spending way too much time there hanging out and having a BBQ. I thought we''d be there like an hour, and it ended up being 3

not that I didn''t have a good time, but I would have rather have been napping or having gotten to visit the zoo for an hour. I finished repacking eventually and we got to bed by midnight to get up at 6:30 am to head to jamaica for the honeymoon.

The honeymoon:

This story coming soon...

 

[Selkie]

Wow, you look amazing! Like a 40''s movie star, especially with the dramatic lipstick. And that dress is to die for. I think I might be getting a Jacquelin dress too (different style), and I would never have heard of them if it hadn''t been for yours! Sickness and all, it still sounds like you had a fabulous wedding. Congratulations!

 

[AmantdeChat]

Great pictures! Everything looks just beautiful. Your dress was just awesome! I love all the lace detailing.

 

[ellaila]

Wow, your makeup is gorgeous!!!

 

[ilovesparkles]

Wow I just love the dress and those stairs pics especially! Just gorgeous wedding!

 

[monarch64]

WoW faerie! I remember you from your makeup thread, and I thought you were beautiful then, but when I looked at your pics (which you were so kind to post, TY!) you are just stunning! You made a gorgeous bride and you seem like such a nice gal! I am happy for you that everything went well...I haven''t read your posts on this thread completely because it''s late here and I need to be getting some sleep, but I will definitely read your story tomorrow. Wanted to mention that I grew up about 1.5 hours straight north of Louisville--it is a beautiful city and all the girls there would be jealous of you--you blew away any southern wedding I have been to, lol!

I wish you the best in your marriage and life!

 

[KristyDarling]

Congratulations!!! You were a radiant, gorgeous bride and everyone in your wedding party looks so young, happy, and full of fun! Your hubby is a cutie, too.

And I am SOOO jealous of your comfy, adorable wedding wedges. I wish I had thought of that!! BTW, your flower girl in her black sash was just way too cute! Congrats again!