The Wedding (Part 1)

Well the wedding went off without a hitch (or appeared so anyway :))

Jonathan and I were at the site the day before at about 8:00am to await the rental company dropping off and installing the tent, etc. In the meantime Fred & Nancy and their handyman were doing some last minute touchups at the property, cutting off some dead tree limbs, etc. We also put together the table decorations by filling the tubes with jellie bellies (lemon & peach). 

My wedding colors were purple and gold which are the same colors as a Best of Breed ribbon at an AKC show. My dad said, "why not Red White & Blue which is the color of a Best in Show ribbon?", and then I reminded him that the BIS rosette at Westminster is purple & gold!

I also spent quite a bit of time removing the wrappings from the placecard holders which were gold colored bells that actually ring. I had quite a pile of plastic and paper when I got through with that project!

The first crew from the rental company arrived about 8:00am to erect the tent. It was 30 x 60 feet and took 3 guys several hours to set up.

About the time they were done, the second crew arrived with everything else but the generator which was to be set up the following morning. This takes a very short time to type about, but it really took much longer than it seems. 

We worked hard setting up tables, and figuring out where everything should go from my master CAD drawing provided by Mindy from the rental company. Unfortunately the crew that dropped off the second load were not the same crew that would install the dance floor, lighting, arch or fans. 

Then the porta-potties arrived. I told the driver where they should go and he said there was no way he could put them back there. We had a little bit of a miscommunication until I realized that he was talking about a trailer, and not two porta-potties. 

It seems that the date was overbooked for the upgraded version I had ordered so they sent us a trailer! Air-conditioned, hot and cold running water, and music! This was a VERY nice surprise indeed. It's exactly what I would have ordered if I'd had a bigger budget!

I had everything planned down to almost the minute (and I have the spreadsheet to prove it!), but I guess as things do ... that went out the window once one thing didn't go as planned! 

We had done as much as we could do before the dance floor, fans, arch, etc. were installed so we left to get ready for our Rehearsal Dinner.  The picture above and left is pretty much what it looked like at that point.

We had just enough time to stop at Michael's for some decorations to take over the next morning when the arch arrived, go home, let the dogs out, get a manicure and head on out to Joe's Crab Shack in Schaumburg. (We were originally supposed to have it at Ember's Charhouse but they closed mysteriously without calling. Fortunately I called to confirm our reservation and found out before the date!)

We were a little late so our families had already introduced themselves by the time we arrived and the party was well underway. Jonathan brought home an interesting souvenir, a mug with flashing lots on the bottom. 

Here is how the morning of June 18, 2005 was SUPPOSED to happen:

The plan for the morning of the wedding was that I would get up early, stop at the store for ice and a helium balloon, get over to the site, attach balloons to the front gate so people would know where to pull in, decorate, set up chairs, and put tablecloths on the tables, etc. According to what I read, it should take no more than 45 minutes to decorate 8 tables.  Jonathan in the meantime would sleep till about 10am (such a morning person he is NOT) when I would come home. wake him up so that he could shower and go to That Pasta Place to pick up our food order by 11:00am. My dad and stepmom would pick me up and take me to the site along with Mickey & Guess. I would be getting my hair and makeup started at about 10:30 so that we would all be ready when the photographer arrived at 11:30 am. Jonathan would be back from That Pasta Place by 12:00. We'd start seating people at roughly 1:00pm and I would walk down the aisle no sooner than 1:30pm (some bad luck thing about the clock hand starting up before I could walk down the aisle, ask Nancy ...)

Here's how it ACTUALLY happened: :)

Because the generator wasn't there (Grand Rental Station wanted to service it before we got it to make sure everything went perfectly) the night before and we needed some hoses for the porta-potty trailer (not required for the ones I had actually ordered so we didn't have them with us), Jonathan had to get up early as well to get all that set up. We went straight over to the site because we had a hard time getting out of the house in time because we were up late the night before and probably had some trouble getting to sleep anyway.

While Jonathan was busy running hoses and learning how to operate the generator I was starting to set up the rest of the tables around the dance floor and putting tablecloths on. We were bringing the centerpieces out and other various items such as candles, some really cute little tin baskets I had purchased to put extra silverware, the salt/pepper shakers, and also all the placecard holders were set up in alphabetical order at the head table so people would know where to sit..

I had not thought that it would be a good idea to set up the chairs the night before because they would get wet and need to be wiped off. However,  as it turned out they really needed to be wiped off anyway as they were dirty from storage, so Nancy was running around with a spray bottle wiping them as we were setting them up. Sometimes thinking ahead is not such a good idea ...

Jonathan started having shooting pains up his arm and I made him sit down for a while and kept working frantically. I was wondering if we were even going to have a wedding as I really wanted to take him to the ER and make sure everything was all right. But he didn't want to go ...

I moved all the beverages from the garage to the tent and Jonathan insisted on helping me even though he was still having the pains. Finally something popped in his shoulder and everything was better. Whew, that was a REAL relief!