Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Now that the wedding is done, I actually have time to do all the blogging that I couldn’t do when I was too busy doing things. I beg the Reading Public’s indulgence for a few posts, as I know that listening to someone gush about her wedding is pretty boring, when it comes right down to it. That said…

I love it when a plan comes together, I must say. Some of the planning had been going on for quite some time, too, but the reality of it was just so much more than I could have hoped for…mostly because of all the wonderful people who were around to share the fun.

I intended to sleep in after the bachelorette party on Friday night. My body had other plans, though, and got me up at my usual workday time on Saturday morning. This was after being out until 12:30 partying, then coming home to find that the entrances into my neighborhood were all flooded on account of the storm. My brother and I were in my car with our designated driver and another friend, and I was all for parking on high ground and walking through the neighbors’ yards the last few blocks to my house. But Ari said, “Mom’s never in bed before 2:00; let’s try there.” (My parents’ house is three blocks from mine, as the crow flies; it’s less than 5 minutes even as the minotaur mazes, which is a more accurate reflection of the geographical situation.)

It turns out that when there’s a power outage, Mom is in bed before 2:00 AM. So, my brother and I ended up coming back to our parents’ house drunk after midnight…which I believe is the first time that has ever happened for either of us. But hey, we’re both over 30 and we had a designated driver. We opted to park the car at Mom & Dad’s and ride home with Soon-to-be-Spouse, while our friends got picked up at a slightly different location than planned. Our parents were kind enough to hang out with us until our various and sundry rides arrived…which took longer than usual as there were many puddly obstacles to navigation that night, and M was still on the south side of town visiting friends when I called him.

But I digress.

So, it was 6:15 AM on Saturday, and I’d had about 4 hours of sleep. What the heck, I was already up, so I walked over to my car and brought it home, then did some stress-relieving cleaning. Next, went to the gym for Zumba class…which turned out to be just what I needed to sweat out the last of my night out. I also dragged my brother out of bed so that he could go running; serendipitously enough, the gym was having an open house weekend, so no guest pass was required.

We had a few hours before we had to be elsewhere, which I passed mostly in some stress-related cleaning and rearranging of furniture, while we waited for some out-of-town relatives to arrive. I also checked on my parents, who still had no power at their house. Unfortunately, when their power goes out, it’s usually out for days. This time was no exception. And when they don’t have power, they also don’t have running water. Fortunately, we had both at my house, so while I had a few extra people showering at my house, I was sufficiently keyed up to barely notice, let alone care.

When one of my friends got married last year, we had a manicure party on the day before her wedding. I thought it was a great idea, so I arranged one for Saturday afternoon. The nail salon was kind enough not to care that the number of people who showed up was slightly different than the number of people we’d planned for, and got us all done in very good order—much faster than I anticipated, in fact, as I expected to go directly from manicure to rehearsal. Michael and the non-manicure bunch went bowling, meanwhile, which I am told went well. I got home first, and the only thing that kept me from doing a little stress-relieving cleaning and furniture rearranging was uncured nail polish.

If you think you’ve detected a theme here, only imagine how far around the bend my soon-to-be spouse was.

In my own defense, my aunt and uncle were bringing me  a couple of large furniture pieces from my grandmother’s storage unit, and I had to have a place ready for them…which I did, when they arrived about 45 minutes before we had to leave for the rehearsal. It pays to be prepared, let me tell you, because we got everything unloaded in very short order, and with a minimum of cat-wrangling. Magnus didn’t even have time to figure out that he’d been shut into a room. I had to resist the temptation to start reorganizing the books immediately (one of the pieces was a revolving bookcase).

I let the cats go free and we dashed off to the rehearsal. (We also took the opportunity to drop off a couple of folding tables and other odds and ends at the ceremony site.) For those of you who’ve never been to one, a wedding rehearsal usually consists of about 45 minutes of figuring out exactly where everyone needs to stand, based on factors like relative height of both the participants and their footwear, the smoothness of the surface one is standing on, and whether or not the guests have a good view of the back of the bride’s dress.

It’s about as much fun as it sounds, but less organized.

Next, the rehearsal/family dinner. Many people have been very gracious in their feedback regarding the rehearsal dinner, and I want to make it clear that I had absolutely nothing to do with it at all–the credit goes to the mothers, and to the restaurant, all of which were lovely. I got to meet some of Michael’s relatives who’d come in from a couple of different states, which I had been looking forward to. They were absolutely wonderful people, and I wish we’d had more time to spend with them…and everyone else who was there, actually. At every family gathering I’ve been to, there are soooo many people to talk to, and never enough time, especially if you’re trying to spend at least a few minutes with everyone.

I was running on pure adrenaline and excitement and even though I’d been up both late and early, it took me a while to get to sleep…during which time I had intended to load up the car with the various necessaries for the wedding and reception. Ari made me sit down while he took care of it (very clever, my brother…) and then summarily sent me off to bed. Next thing I knew, I was wide awake at 2:39 AM. And hungry. I was up for a couple of hours before I felt tired enough to go back to bed for a couple of hours.

Soon-to-be-Spouse was awake the entire night.

By 7:00 I was up again, and did a little yoga…during which I inadvertently woke up my brother, who was gracefully philosophical about it and did the only sensible thing under the circumstances; he made coffee. (Spouse had gone to breakfast with an aunt and uncle whom he hadn’t seen in several years).

I didn’t start feeling nervous until I got to my hair appointment. I cannot say enough wonderful things about my hairdresser; she is a genius AND a sweetheart. I was the first customer in the salon that morning, and  everyone gravitated over to where the action was. I expect that it was a lot like any workplace when things are slow; I just gave them a topic of conversation. Everyone there was wonderfully nice, providing color commentary on the action and let me join in the joking, chatting, and laughing—which went a long way towards calming me down. I hadn’t planned to get my makeup done along with my hair, but given the way my hands were shaking, it seemed like a good idea.

If you’ve never had your makeup done professionally, imagine sitting in a chair with your eyes closed for about 20 minutes, while various creams and powders are applied to your face in a brisk, decisive manner. While this is happening, you have absolutely no idea what’s going on. You could end up looking like the cover of Vogue; you could end up looking like Tammy Faye Baker.

But, as I said, my hairdresser is a genius, and when I finally looked in the mirror, I couldn’t believe it was me. Not even after I put my glasses on. “Now all I have to do is avoid touching my face or my hair for the next eight hours,” I said.

I dashed home, collect my dress and my brother, and we headed out to lunch with the wedding party. My perception of wedding party events is that you either have a bunch of people who have known each other for years and are all abuzz with mutual excitement, or you have a bunch of people who don’t know each other and you end up talking about the weather, your pets, and other safe topics of conversation. We had a mix of both when we started, but one of our ushers had a great story about her job that unfurled like a perfect sitcom episode, and pretty soon everyone was very nearly falling out of chairs laughing. The last of my nervousness melted away, leaving me excited beyond the telling of it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Going Bridal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.