I popped up long enough, last month, to tell you that I have So Many Wedding Planning Stories and also to tell you about Monkey graduating from college, and then I disappeared (again! I am nothing if not predictable in my slacker-ness!) because it turns out that the last month before a wedding is ABSOLUTE BONKERS INSANITY no matter how well you thought you planned. Those last four weeks, I kept saying “After this task, I’m done!” and I believed it, too, every single time. But I wasn’t actually done until the wedding day itself, because there was always someone who needed me to verify something or give them money or verify something WHILE giving them money, or something that needed to be wrapped in jute (ruuuuuuustic!), or boxes of Very Important Items that needed to be transported somewhere, or… you get the idea.

Weddings, it turns out, are a lot of work.

Usually this is the part where I tell you about the fifty different things that went wrong, but I am here to report, scout’s honor, that the wedding itself was perfect. PERFECT. Like, could not have gone better in my wildest dreams. I have never seen my oldest child so happy and radiant. I have never seen my youngest child—I hope you’re sitting down—rush out onto the dance floor and actually dance and mingle and laugh and act like they’ve done it a hundred times before. I could talk about it for forever and still not cover everything that made it amazing, so suffice it to say: MAH BAYBEE GOT MARRIED and it was magical.

But DON’T YOU WORRY, because plenty of the stuff that happened BEFORE the wedding was… not. So, um, let me just get right into it.

Allow me to present to you a brief and not at all comprehensive list of various shenanigans and crazy-making that went into The Most Magical Day.

Floral Follies

Recall, if you will, the saga of the floral centerpieces. Shortly after rigging up the floral foam and fairy lights and plastic holder and acrylic rocks, Sunny’s mom came over and we walked in circles around my dining room table while we divided all the various florals into 12 piles, and then we started working on the arrangements.

When we’d each finished one, we snapped a pic and sent it to the brides. “Those look amazing!” they said. So we kept going.

It turns out that floral arranging is no small task, and also Sunny’s mom had to leave after a bit, so I don’t quite remember how many we had done before she left, but I do remember that it took me the rest of the day to finish up. 12 floral centerpieces! Beautiful! Totally worth the hassle!

I sent pics to the girls. And at some point—I don’t remember when, but I believe my child when she tells me this is my fault, because of course—I apparently made an offhand comment about how I wished we’d made them a little bit shorter, but they were good. The wood flowers, you see, get hot glued to wire stems that are basically just green wire. Whatever height the flower arrangements were, you could see the (spindly) wires in some places.

So I should not have been surprised when the girls came home in December and one of the first things Chickadee said to me, upon beholding the flowers, was, “Can we make them shorter?” By “we” she insists she meant she would help, but of course there was no time during that trip between Monkey’s graduation and everything else they had to take care of, so the week after they left, I sat down to—I thought—pick out each individual stem, snip a few inches off, and reinsert.

It quickly became clear that my plan was flawed. The point of shortening the stems was to make the arrangements fuller, and as such, the “canopy” was drastically changed by the stem shortening. So I tried one-stem-at-a-time and when it was clear that wasn’t going to work, I switched to one-section-at-a-time, and I was probably only two vases in when I realized I was indeed redoing the entire thing, and the right way to do that was to just remove everything and rearrange.

“But Mir,” you may be thinking, “Why did you do that all by yourself? Surely Sunny’s mom would’ve come back over and helped if you’d asked!” I’m sure she would’ve. Truthfully I was… a little embarrassed? I guess? Anything Very Specific in this process has come from my child, not hers. So I just… took care of it.

I made 12 of these. Twice! #notbitteratall

The good news is that I think they really did turn out gorgeous, and all of the tiny cuts on the tips of my fingers have already healed. (You know how in The Long Winter Laura Ingalls goes on and on about how they spent all day twisting hay into sticks to keep the fire going, and how it ripped up their fingers? Redoing the centerpieces was like that, minus the whole “might die in the bitter frontier winter” part.)

Marshmallowgate

I—a strong, independent woman—raised my daughter to be a strong, independent woman. Yay! Except. I’m sure this will be shocking to hear, but… we did have some disagreements during the wedding process. I know, wild! Most of those disagreements stemmed from me being stupid, evidently.

At some point I had chosen something wrong for the umpteenth time (I’m abridging, here), and Chickie told me that under no circumstances should I purchase ANYTHING AT ALL for the wedding without running it past her, first. This is a fair and reasonable request. But then one day she didn’t answer my texts for hours and I bought something without checking with her.

She then stopped speaking to me for an entire week.

Listen, I will be the first to admit that I made a mistake, and also that sometimes things between me and my darling daughter take on a life of their own, wherein something that isn’t, on its face, a terribly big deal somehow becomes “you never listen to me” or some other trigger-laden traumafest just because we are both delicate flowers with definite opinions. I’m not gonna lie—I was super frustrated (and hurt, honestly) about how this turned into A Thing, but eventually we talked it out and apologized and life went on.

The nearly-relationship-ruining event in question? Marshmallows.

The brides decided early on that they wanted to do little jars of homemade cocoa mix as wedding favors. (Actually, that’s not quite true. Originally the girls said “Favors are dumb! We’re not doing favors!” And then eventually we landed on cocoa.) Naturally they said they’d handle everything.

HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Just kidding! I’m funny.

They decided I should take care of them, but to their specs, of course. Which led to negotiations over: amount, containers, tags, twine (oh yes, we had TWO kinds of jute, y’know—normal AND metallic), contents, etc.

I did not skimp on this cocoa mix, y’all. I bought the good Dutch cocoa, the kind that arrived without a single word of English on the packaging. The dehydrated WHOLE milk, for maximum creaminess. The dark chocolate Ghirardelli chips! I went whole hog. And so when I was looking around online for fancy marshmallows and happened across a small candymaker that does gourmet varieties, I was intrigued. But oh, they were crazy expensive. Okay, no worries. BUT THEN one day I happened to see them selling bags of what are essentially irregulars (the ends of slabs and stuff) online, along with the caveat that they don’t always have them, and the price was right and the girls weren’t answering me, so I bought some.

Once communication was reestablished, I was informed that they had “a certain look in mind” and “those were not going to work.” Meanwhile I offered the counterargument that I had ordered some fondant cutters and could make these marshmallows into ANY SHAPE THEY WANTED and also why was I buying the good/expensive ingredients if we were simply going to top with store-brand mini marshmallows? We were at an impasse.

My cutters arrived. Marshmallows are VERY sticky. They’ll stick to anything. Even, say, cutters. And then they malform when you detach them. Who knew?

I dutifully ate my plate of crow and purchased “regular” marshmallows for the favors. It took me almost two full days to make all the mix (six “big batch” batches, measured by weight for accuracy) and fill all the jars, and I sneezed cocoa dust for three days. But when all was said and done, they were super cute! And I just had some last night, and the mix makes the most decadent cocoa I’ve ever had. Which is a good thing, because half the guests went “Oh, I don’t really drink cocoa” and left them, so I have LOADS of these wee adorable 4-ounce mason jars full of mix.

But look how cute!!

In addition to having a sort of open house/rehearsal dinner hybrid the night before the wedding (over at Sunny’s parents’ house, for out-of-town family), the girls had asked to have an ice cream social kind of thing AFTER, at our house, for their out-of-town friends. That week I whipped up batches of homemade caramel and hot fudge, and we picked up an unholy amount of ice cream and whipped cream and sprinkles and such. And the day of the event, Chickie happened upon me in the kitchen, and asked when I was doing. I was cutting up the “fancy” marshmallows into bits as a topping for the ice cream, which of course was hilarious, because LOOK AT MOM INSISTING ON MAKING SOMEONE EAT THESE. (They’re delicious. I thought I was being nice.)

Anyway, by the time we got back from Sunny’s house that night, I had a migraine brewing and was just plain exhausted, so I set up all the ice cream stuff for the girls and told them I was going to bed. The last thing I heard when I was dozing off was Sunny telling someone “Oh, we’ve got all kinds of ice cream, and toppings, and OH! We’ve got these weird gourmet marshmallows, they’re a WHOLE THING.” I felt a small pang. Sunny, being terribly good-natured and also not my actual flesh and blood, has always been so sweet to me. She had never said a word about the marshmallows. But, well, I guess she’s officially my kid, now, which means I am to be regarded as the embarrassing, ridiculous person I am.

Whatever. I SNEEZED COCOA DUST FOR THREE DAYS. EAT YOUR MARSHMALLOWS AND SHADDUP.

Chair Comedy (of Errors and Anger)

The venue where we had the girls’ reception was lovely, and like—I assume—all wedding venues, they were willing to cater to your every whim, provided you were ready to pay an upcharge for every. single. tiny. thing. This enraged me, over and over, because 1) they weren’t cheap to begin with and 2) there were multiple occasions where charges were sprung on us at the eleventh hour and I think that’s poor business. [Sidebar: This was absolutely MORTIFYING to my poor child. Any time I questioned anything, she was so embarrassed by me. And every time I was baffled by her reaction. “Did I raise my voice? Did I call names or swear? Did I say ‘I WILL NOT PAY!’ or otherwise freak out?” No, no, it was my TONE, you see. My tone of incredulity was… rude? I guess? This was a constant bone of contention between us, but everyone lived!]

When we signed the contract with the venue, a year+ ago, we noted straight off that we would be opting for a chair upgrade. I forget what the “standard” chairs are (metal folding chairs, maybe?), but the first upgrade level is to folding wooden chairs, and the girls wanted those. Fine. You’re charged per chair (of course) and that was fine. There is another upgrade level above that one, and those are non-folding chiavari chairs. (This will be important in a minute.)

At some point in the planning process, the girls reminded me that as they were planning a traditional Jewish wedding and celebration, they would be planning to do the hora (traditional Jewish celebration dance) at the reception, and that would include them being lifted up on chairs during the dance. Excellent. Except… we’d opted for folding chairs, and that seemed like an unsafe option for lifting them into the air, right? But the chiavari chairs were also an option, so I went into our little discussion portal with the venue and let them know we’d also like to upgrade two chairs to the top-tier ones for the hora.

“The minimum number of any chair upgrade is 24,” the event coordinator wrote back. This came through and I shared it with Chickadee to complain about how ridiculous of a rule that was (I mean, we were already upgrading, and surely all the chairs are stored in the same place?), and rather than commiserating with me, my darling daughter launched into a missive about how they had already TOLD ME that those chairs were SO UGLY, why would I think they wanted THOSE? I took a moment to collect my jaw from the floor and pointed out that I had gotten them the requested chairs, but I simply wanted two SAFER non-folding chairs, and that was the only non-folding option, so I thought they could deal with them. No. No, they could not. No matter that the venue was being ridiculous, because those chairs are HIDEOUS and they would never want them in their pictures, anyway.

Cool, cool.

Thus began The Great Chair Hunt, wherein I scoured Facebook Marketplace every day for… weeks? Months? It’s all kind of blurred together. I would find a possible option and send it to the girls, they would respond or not (“Mom, I AM WORKING, I can’t always respond right away!”), and either I’d found the ugliest chairs ever or okay, that might be acceptable, and either the seller would never respond or the chairs were already sold.

Did I WANT to buy chairs? No. But I would. FOR MY BABY. TO MAKE ALL OF HER RUSTIC CHAIR DREAMS COME TRUE. Or something. Also to find chairs that “matched the aesthetic” and that were relatively lightweight (but sturdy) and had arms (because, let’s face it, being thrust into the air in a chair while people twirl around you is fairly horrifying, anyway—may as well have something to hold onto).

Finally I happened upon a super cheap pair of wooden arm chairs that I could see working. The only problem? They were painted green. I sent the link to the girls, adding a note that I would repaint them any color they desired. To my surprise, they said those chairs would be great. “But,” added Chickie, “could you maybe just strip the paint so we can have the natural wood?”

I let her know that I had no idea what I might find underneath and they might yet require paint, but that I would try. Otto picked up the chairs on his way home a couple of days later, and I partially disassembled them, did a thorough cleaning, and began the painstaking process of coating them in Citristrip and scraping off layer after layer of paint. On the second day, as I neared stripping completion, Otto came outside to join me and offered to powerwash the last of the gunk off as I finished. So I handed off one chair to him while I did the final scraping on the other. And I was nearly done when I heard him swearing.

One of the spindles had broken where it met the top of the chair. Further inspection made it clear that it had broken previously and been glued, which meant fixing it was probably a bad idea.

Not only was this frustrating (money down the drain, two days of pointless labor), this immediately led the brides to conclude that my chair assessment skills were lacking. Maybe I couldn’t be trusted with this task, y’know? There were many chair jokes at my expense. But I bravely soldiered on!

Thanksgiving week, I spent every spare minute poring over Amazon, looking for a Lightning Deal or similar ridiculous discount on chairs. I had accepted that only brand new would be reassuring to the skeptical brides, and figured I could either resell after the wedding, or give them to Monkey when they move out (which will be happening soon). Days passed and my narrow window of acceptable chair specs (wooden! rustic! with arms! not too heavy! no weird colors!) meant there were precious few options available, and none seemed to be on sale.

But THEN. One day the shopping deities smiled upon me. Don’t ask me how I found them, but in looking at some French provincial dining armchairs, I stumbled upon a set of four “Used, Like New: Packing May Be Damaged” chairs in the Amazon Warehouse. Regular retail cost of these chairs: $800 ($200 apiece). Warehouse price: $171 (under $50 apiece, and also HOW do they come up with these prices, because that seems random). I sent the listing to Chickadee immediately. “PLEASE SAY YES,” I begged. I did not WANT four chairs, but I wanted to keep looking for chairs even less. And at that kind of discount, I could resell and actually make money. The thumbs up was given, and I ordered.

Delivery day arrived, and because the package was so enormous, I had to give my driver a super secret code from my account just to get him to leave it with me. He was walking back to his truck when I opened the door back up and probably surprised the heck out of him. “Oh hey,” I said, “is it possible there’s a second box? I just looked inside and this is only two chairs. I ordered a set of four.” There was not. He suggested I call customer service.

I did, and the woman on the phone assured me that the other two chairs were coming in two weeks. Why this date? How did she know? Honestly I think she just made it up. We went round and round and she kept telling me to just wait, they were coming (even though my account showed the order as delivered/complete), and finally I gave up. The supposed delivery date for the missing chairs came and went, and—try to contain your shock!—no chairs were delivered.

In the meantime, Otto assembled the two chairs we did receive, and they are actually really nice, so that was sorted, at least. But when the others didn’t show up, I hopped on a customer chat with Amazon. In the interest of keeping this novella from becoming a full-blown novel, I’ll give you the condensed version.
Me: I ordered four chairs. I only got two. I would like a 50% refund.
CSR: No problem, you can return the chairs for a full refund.
Me: No, I don’t want to do that. And even if I did, they are chairs. Which are now assembled. I can’t ship them back.
CSR: No problem, in that case I can give you 25% off.
Me: No, I only received half my order. I would like 50% off.
CSR: Oh I see. You can return the chairs for a full refund.
Me: I AM NOT RETURNING THE CHAIRS.
CSR: …
Me: …
CSR: …
Me: Do you have a supervisor I can talk to?
CSR: Sure, hang on!
*time passes*
Supervisor: I have reviewed your case and you are welcome to return the chairs for a full refund.
Me: I. Do. Not. Want. To. Return. The. Chairs. I want a refund for the two I didn’t receive. I don’t understand why this is so hard.
Supervisor: In that case I will simply refund the entire balance to you and you can keep the chairs.
Me: … really?
Supervisor: Yes! Have a nice day!

… and that is the bizarre story of how we got two chairs worth $400 for free.

[Addendum: Remember how I said there is an upgrade charge per chair at the venue, and we signed the contract and asked for those chairs well over a year ago? During our final walkthrough, a few weeks before the event, we were casually informed that because the wedding was on a Sunday, there would also be a $300 “retrieval charge” for the chairs. Which. Listen, I think that’s ridiculous, anyway. But the wedding had been scheduled for a Sunday this entire time. They JUST figured that out? It left a really bad taste in my mouth, and when I (politely!) inquired as to why we were just learning about this, weeks prior to the event, my child was mortified. I’m the worst!]

Outdoors, Indoors

The girls were married inside a synagogue, where it is a little unclear whether you “must” have a chuppah per Jewish tradition. (Outside, yes. Inside, maybe not.) Regardless, the girls wanted a chuppah, and a chuppah of birch branches was procured and then (I am told) wrestled together by the fathers of the brides. Per their requests, I had obtained some fake greenery—a couple of different types of vines, some flowers, etc.—and some tulle as possible decor for said chuppah, even before the chuppah arrived. On some trip home, Chickie reviewed my purchases and asked me to buy more of one specific vine type. I pointed out that the bag I already had contained a dozen strands; she said she wasn’t sure it would be enough and it wasn’t expensive, please just get some more. So I did.

You know what’s coming, right? Two days before the wedding, both families convened on the chuppah to outfit it to the brides’ liking. With so many of us there, it didn’t take long, and ivy was wrapped along supports, lavender dangled from the front edge, etc. As I went to add more, at one point, Chickadee stopped me. “I think that’s plenty,” she said. “I like the wood and don’t want to cover it up.” I peeked into my bag of supplies. “You realize we didn’t even use up the first bag of those vines, right? That you made me buy a second one for no reason?”

(Have I mentioned that I am the absolute wooooooorst? Because I definitely am!)

Also, the plan all along had been to do family pictures outdoors, prior to the ceremony, but then a week before the wedding the forecast started fluctuating between “super cold and gross” and “probably still way too cold, maybe not gross” and it seemed like outdoor pics weren’t going to be possible. But then wedding day dawned and by the time we were getting ready for pictures, it was maybe 50 degrees and sunny, so not too bad at all. Our intrepid photo team (friends of Otto’s from grad school, absofreakinglutely amazing photographers and lovely people, to boot) (and yes they travel, and yes I will give you their information if you want it) scouted around and decided to take us to a certain spot outside for our various posed pics.

All went well, but we’d had quite a lot of rain that week, and the ground was soft. Those of us wearing heels were constantly fighting sinking into the soil. “My shoes are gonna be ruined before we even have the ceremony,” Chickie fretted, at some point, and I assured her that I would take care of them when we were done, and they’d be fine.

I was dismissed before the brides, and made my way back inside the synagogue and cleaned up my own shoes and get some paper towels together to do Chickie’s shoes when they returned. And then, I don’t know. They took a little longer than expected? I got to talking to some people who arrived early? Anyway, time passed, and the girls finally returned and were sequestered in the waiting area as people started arriving. After a little bit, the day-of coordinator (HIGHLY RECOMMEND; she’s like the cruise director for the day) came bustling up to me and said, “She needs you,” and my brain was immediately, inexplicably, overwhelmed with emotion. Tears filled my eyes! The moment had arrived! My daughter, whom I have nurtured and catered to for almost 26 years, is about to have the biggest day of her life, and she needs me! This is the time when everything I’ve ever done comes to sentimental fruition and she thanks me for everything!

“… to come clean her shoes,” she finished.

Oh.

Right, that. Okay! (They cleaned up just fine.) (In an unexpected turn of events, though, Sunny’s heelplate broke off her shoe when she stomped on the glass at the end of the ceremony. She wore her broken shoe for the rest of the night like it was no big thing.)

The Most Important Negotiation

There are approximately five bazillion decisions that must be made when planning a wedding, and I’m pleased and relieved to report that—despite everything else I’ve already shared—the most pivotal one did NOT involve my child being annoyed with me at all.

Being me, in the early stages of planning I sent Chickadee and Sunny links any time I saw what I thought was a cute cake topper, just to give them some ideas. Eventually my daughter FaceTimed me and said “Hi! I love you. But please stop sending us links. It’s overwhelming.” Whoops! So I stopped.

And then one day Chickie told me she’d found the perfect cake topper, but Sunny wasn’t so sure. She showed it to me and I loved it. Sunny said she wasn’t sure it “fit the vibe.” The bargaining was begun, and I forget, now, what my kid had to either give up or agree to in order to get her way, but get her way she did.

Meet the T-Rexes. They’re SO EXCITED to be getting married!

The same brides who insisted on RUSTIC and PINK and LACE and ELEGANT and THE VIBE did indeed cut their cake to the theme music from Jurassic Park, and allowed me to buy custom dinosaur embossed napkins for the dessert table. It was PERFECT.

Two small, additional notes about our dino friends:

1) Sunny ended up selecting a shirt for her suit where her chosen tie was a bit wider than the collar, so as part of their alterations, she had her tie narrowed to fit better. When the girls came home, four days before the wedding, Chickadee came downstairs at some point and gestured for me to hold out my hand. I did, and she dropped a handful of tie scraps into it. “What’s this?” I asked. She reminded me that I’d said it might be fun if the cake topper dino had a tie actually made from Sunny’s tie. “Oh, right,” I said. “So YOU’RE going to make that, Chickie, right?” My daughter made sad puppy eyes at me, even as I protested that I hadn’t the faintest idea of how to make a tiny dino tie.

Reader, I made a tiny dino tie. He arrived with a bow tie, he stood on the cake with a replica of Sunny’s tie.

2) Two days after the wedding, when I was attempting to set the house back to rights and organize everything we’d brought home, I realized the T-Rexes needed to be cleaned, because, well, they’d been standing IN the cake. But when I got them out and started cleaning them up, I discovered they had frosting EVERYWHERE, including in their mouths. I ended up asking the photographers if they’d possibly done some creative dinosaur posing…? My query was met with giggling. Sure, most people can’t wait to see the formal family pics, but I am REALLY looking forward to whatever it was the T-Rexes got up to.

Cake Craziness

You remember the saga of the rustic cupcake stands, right? They were completed and gorgeous and the brides had a VERY SPECIFIC layout in mind. So specific, in fact, that two days before the wedding, we did a dessert table mock-up and mailed a photo to the cake lady so she would know exactly how to arrange everything.

The idea was quite simple (we thought): we’d ordered a small two-tier cake, three flavors of regular cupcakes, and one dozen gluten-free cupcakes. The cake would sit in the middle of the table, on the top of the tallest stand, with “matching” cupcakes beneath; one flavor of cupcakes apiece would grace each of the two flanking shorter stands; and then additional wood slice “platters” would hold the overflow, as well as the GF cupcakes. A friend of Chickie’s with gorgeous handwriting was hired to do all of the signage, and so there were also clear labels for all flavors.

Let me start by saying that in the grand scheme, the following is truly the ONLY thing that went “wrong,” and it wasn’t a big deal. But.

1) The “small” cake we’d ordered turned out to be… easily two feet tall. It was enormous. Gigantic. And so it was not placed in the spot of honor atop the tallest stand, because that would’ve made it taller than the brides. This was… weird, but fine. The cake sat on the table, the stands were artfully arranged; fine.

2) I think the reason that cake ended up so gargantuan was that the cake lady maybe… forgot?… the VERY SPECIFIC conversations the brides had had with her about what they wanted inside.

They said: Beautiful, elegant, smooth ivory wedding cake outside. Cut into the top cake and SURPRISE: rainbow layers! Those layers can be very thin to keep the cake size manageable. And they needn’t be primary colors—pastels are fine. Go light on the food coloring. Please remember that a rainbow is ROY-G-BIV. The bottom cake can be regular, non-colored vanilla.

What she did: Beautiful, elegant, smooth ivory wedding cake outside. Cut into the top cake and SURPRISE: multicolor neon cake! Thick layers! Both cakes just came from a rave, possibly in 1982! SO MUCH COLOR! Have a slice of psychedelic cake, it definitely will not give you cancer!

3) Also: Cake lady forgot all about ROY-G-BIV. these eyeball-searing cake layers were in no particular order, nor did they cover the entire rainbow. To the girls’ credit, there was a moment of furrowed brows as they cut the cake and noticed this, but they went with it and as this was the only thing that didn’t go according to plan, it wasn’t a big deal.

4) Also also: When we did our cake tasting, the flavors were bold and yummy and choosing was difficult, but the brides made their selections and were ready for the forthcoming deliciousness. At the actual wedding, the cupcakes looked a little different. That was fine. I think I had a couple of bites of a cupcake and didn’t think much about it.

The day after, we had family over for brunch, and because we had approximately eight hundred leftover cupcakes, eventually I brought the boxes in from the garage and encouraged everyone to partake. Someone asked which flavor was which and… we realized that all the cupcakes were approximately the same color. Now, we were supposed to have apple spice, strawberry, and chocolate. I feel like those maaayyyyyyyybe should be very different colors…? But no matter if they taste great, right? We separated the cupcakes by (slight) color variation and did a taste test. They all tasted… nearly the same. The apple cupcakes tasted like cinnamon. The strawberry (maybe?) cupcakes tasted like vanilla. And the chocolate cupcakes tasted like vanilla. I am baffled.

I adore the cake lady. I need to write her a note about our experience—not to complain, but just so she can use this experience to improve, moving forward—and I haven’t done it yet because I am so confused by what happened and I need to figure out how to tell her without it sounding mean. Because “Wow, you completely screwed up nearly every aspect of this” is a difficult thing to say in a way that won’t feel bad.

But it was all very pretty and Cake Is Always Delicious and the brides took it in stride, so… eh.

In the end…

… I was prepared for catastrophes, meltdowns, major snafus, drama, and craziness of all kinds. I figured it was inevitable. Not just for the wedding itself, but the entire weddingpalooza weekend stretch, y’know?

The reality far exceeded my expectations. Rotten weather meant some folks ended up not being able to travel to us, and that was disappointing, but no one fell apart. (Bonus: Bestie Kira’s flight home was canceled, which meant she had to stay an extra day! DARN!) The cake situation was a little weird, sure. But the venue delivered on every detail, our coordinator was on top of ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING all day long, the actual wedding ceremony was beautiful, and oh, my heart. The brides. Both of them. Absolutely glowing, the entire time. So happy, so in love, so absolutely the picture of “best day ever.” I love them both so much and am so so so glad they got the day of their dreams.

In conclusion: It was exhausting, it was perfect, and I am never leaving the house again. The end.