Other Wedding Details... ad nauseum

When John said he wanted to get married, I said that I didn't care how we accomplished it - the only things I definitely wanted to have were: a nice dress, a good picture, and real flowers. So when we moved the wedding up to February, I took a few long lunch hours and went dress shopping! I should have asked the shopgirls for help getting in and out of the dresses, but since I didn't have a friend along and since I wasn't trying on actual wedding gowns, I thought I could do it on my own. But I really wanted a full-length dress, and some of those dresses were pretty heavy... so I actually slightly injured my shoulder from trying to get into and zip up a bunch of wedding dresses!!! Not exactly sure what that injury would be called... ;D

But I ended up with a cream-colored silk suit - long-sleeved with French cuffs, and a straight skirt cut just below the knee. Very Jackie Kennedy, especially with the fab shoes I bought! I had really wanted something long and flowing, but I kept coming back to this suit - it was much more flattering on me than most of the other dresses I tried on, and it just felt right. I wasn't planning on a veil, but the owner of the dress shop put a smallish veil on me and we decided to dispose of one of the two layers of tulle, and then it felt right.

Actually, the funny thing is that I went to the Colorado Mills mall (the local version of Potomac Mills) and just thought I'd kind of get an idea of what kind of dresses looked good on me... and the first shop I went into ended up being the place where I bought my dress, veil, and shoes, and found someone to do wedding flowers (a friend of the owner). They even steamed Bailey's dress for free.

We bought John's suit (charcoal-gray pinstriped) the week after I got my suit, and we managed to find suits for both Oliver and Harry that looked fairly similar to John's. They all wore white shirts with ties in shades of cream and gold and yellow - which sounds kind of weird but looked great.

I realized that turning Bailey loose on a mall the day before the wedding was a really bad idea - she's a total clotheshorse, so it would have taken all day for her to decide on one dress. So I dragged John and Harry around the weekend before and got a dress and matching sweater in several different sizes (so we could find the best fit) - she wore a sleeveless sage-green dress with flowers, leaves, and vines embroidered all over it, with a cream-colored dressy sweater over it. John described it to her over the phone about a week before the wedding, and she said, "Oh, it sounds beautiful!" John said, "Do you know what embroidery is?" She said, "No, but it still sounds beautiful!" :D

Harry was sick (pneumonia) two weeks before the wedding, then John was sick the weekend before (fever), then Harry was sick again a few days before the wedding (fever and throwing up... usually on me). So we tried to get as much done prior to the week of, but unfortunately were a bit behind.

Mom sent the cake on Wednesday and I got it on Thursday, so it had time to thaw before the wedding. John went to pick up Oliver and Bailey on Thursday, so they arrived late Thursday afternoon. Then we all had dinner and basically went straight to bed.

On Friday, Harry went to school, and I split the day between working and running wedding errands. We had bought most of Harry's outfit but needed the last few things (shirt and tie); we had a dress and sweater for Bailey but needed shoes and tights and a hair clip; and we needed to dress Oliver from the ground up (I didn't know his sizes so couldn't pre-shop for him the way I had for Harry and Bailey). So John and O and B spent pretty much all day shopping and getting a haircut for Oliver, and I met them for a few hours to help with the shopping details.

Then I went off to deal with the wedding flowers. The woman who did the flowers had created a beautiful little flower arrangement in a basket for Bailey and had made two nice boutonnieres for John and Oliver... but she had apparently forgotten the boutonniere for Harry and my flowers were just... nice. They were perfectly pretty but just looked like she had clumped together some cream roses, some pink spray roses, some cream/pink lisianthus, and some lilac asters and wrapped a pink ribbon around them... which I could have done myself. I'd been hoping for something with a little more oomph, so I decided I'd go to a flower shop and buy some statice or waxflower and just shove little pieces of it among the flowers to give it a little excitement. But I went to a florist and the wedding consultant offered to redo the bouquet for free... so for the price of a few stems of flowers, she turned the bouquet from nice to absolutely gorgeous in about 20 minutes. I was SO happy with the redone bouquet! I actually have it on my desk now and it still looks nice, and I'm planning to hang it to dry and see how well that works. If not - oh well - I'll have had a beautiful bouquet for a week!

Friday night we had our usual pizza-and-movie night... Papa John's was running a valentine special with heart-shaped pizzas :) and we couldn't resist, and we watched about half of the first Harry Potter movie - we're all fans, even our Harry! Then a bath for each of the kids and off to bed. John and I stayed up a bit later, getting all the clothing staged to put in the car the next morning, and trying to find a nice place to go to lunch - John's brother Jim had offered to take the kids after the wedding so they could spend some play time with their uncle, aunt, and cousin while John and I had a quiet lunch. So we decided to go a bit upscale and looked for a really nice restaurant... but two of the four places we investigated had gone out of business, and two were not open for Saturday lunch! So we finally gave up and went to bed. Neither one of us slept really well the night before the wedding - a little bit of cold feet plus hoping we wouldn't forget anything important.

The next morning was crazy - getting John and me showered and ready plus getting the kids ready plus packing the car, etc. - at one point, John couldn't find the license, and we had to make sure the kids had toys for their stay at their Uncle Jim's house, etc. Finally we all got on our way!

We got up to the church a bit late, so we had planned to start the wedding around 10:30am but it actually started closer to 11am. Everyone looked gorgeous and we pinned a little pink spray rose onto Harry's jacket for a boutonniere... but he wanted to carry one, too (since Bailey and I were carrying flowers!) So I broke off another pink rose and he carried it in and held it for at least half of the service. I actually don't remember how we all processed in - I'll have to check the photos! I think Bailey and Oliver went in front and then John and Harry and I went in together? Or maybe the three kids went in together and then John and I walked behind them.

We were supposed to process in to "This Is My Father's World" (a beautiful hymn plus great words) but the organist was having so much fun with Bach that we got to the front before he switched gears, so Vic just started the service and then announced "This Is My Father's World" as a musical interlude, which was fine.

Then we had the ceremony, which was beautiful - John got a bit teary during the vows, which of course got me choked up, but we managed all the necessary words. :) Harry filled his diaper somewhere in the first five minutes and lost patience with standing after a little while, so he climbed the two stairs at the altar and jumped back down several times, sat on one of the stairs, rolled around on the floor, kicked off a shoe (and then put it back on), patted the minister, ran off down the aisle, etc. We had hired the minister's granddaughter to look after Harry but said that we wanted him with us as much as possible, so we just let him do his thing and didn't worry about it.

Then after the ceremony, we signed the license and took pictures, then Uncle Jim came and got the kids changed and drove off with them. We took lots more pictures (the photographer kept saying, "Okay, I think we're done - no, wait - do that thing again, that was really cute!" so it took a bit longer than we had anticipated).

Then we ended up eating at the Vietnamese restaurant in Evergreen - we've been there before, but the food is great and the atmosphere is nice... and the service is incredibly slow, which was perfect for this occasion since we didn't need to worry about Harry's appetite/patience. Several people did a doubletake as they saw my veil and John's boutonniere and we got some congratulations. Fun! And it was really nice to have a little time on our own to get used to being married. :)

Then we changed and picked up the kids - offered them a choice of going to a movie or eating at Red Robin, and they chose Red Robin (which we didn't expect). So we all had dinner and got balloons and went home. We cut pieces of wedding cake (which survived the shipping beautifully - looked like we'd picked it up at the bakery ourselves) and since the tradition of the bride and groom feeding each other cake is to symbolize that they will nurture and feed each other, we decided that John and I would feed cake to each other and then each of us would feed cake to each of the kids. :) Unfortunately, Harry was exhausted from playing so hard all day, so he fell asleep on John's lap while we were getting the cake cut, so we had to postpone feeding him cake for another day!

Then the kids all went off to bed and John and I had a little time to breathe a sigh of relief that it was all over and had gone so well... but we didn't stay up long because we were pretty tired, ourselves!

The next day, John had to drive Oliver and Bailey home and Harry and I just stayed home and had a quiet day.

In some ways, I wish you all could have been there... but in other ways, I really enjoyed the quiet, intimate nature of it all. It was a beautiful way to start our married life together.

My friends at work tease me by asking periodically, "So, how's married life?" And I have to say... so far, so good!