The Wedding: Act I, scene one - Prologue

In the weeks and days leading up to the wedding everything kicked up into warp drive.  I worked part of the week before the wedding, and in my infinite wisdom, I took on several extra on-call rotations as well.  This meant I was not only stuck in Cowtown much of the weeks and weekends before the wedding, but I was also working.

I'm smart like that.

I have to say, for this being a mostly DIY wedding, and me being a mostly Put-It-Off-Until-The-Last-Minute kind of girl, I had mostly everything done about a week before the actual wedding.

Mostly.

I wanted to do the majority of it myself, in part because I have control issues, and also because I like doing this sort of thing.  And if I'm going to have to be there anyway, it might as well have my fabulous craftiness spewing out of every orifice!

Now there's a mental image I bet you weren't expecting today!  You're welcome.

However, I'm also not delusional, and I knew that trying to do everything ourselves had the potential for this Anti-Bride to find herself in the fetal position in some dark corner rocking back and forth and mumbling to herself in tongues only understood by aboriginal tribes in the deepest parts of the Australian Bush, and a few Evangelists in Georgia.

We're enterprising individuals, MacGyver, my family and I, and we did what any smart business-minded people would do in our situation.  It's called outsourcing, my friends!  Oh yes, though I can assure you 8year old children in Chinese sweatshops were involved in this negotiation.  Not this part, anyway.  We had the dinner catered, the bar tended, and a cake baked.

My mom already knew the caterer and we worked in the bartender as part of that fee and can I please get a Hallelujah! for that woman?!  I never had an empty glass in my hand the whole night.

When it came time to decide on cakes, I had it narrowed down to two styles.  One was fairly simple, elegant, traditional, etc.  But I was torn, as I really felt the other cake spoke to me on a very deep, esoteric level.

I'm curious to see, given the choices, which you would have chosen?

Cake #1:

or Cake #2:

You see my dilemma.

I showed both cakes to MacGyver, and he just looked at me hard for a minute, then he walked away.  He didn't actually say anything, but I'm pretty sure he was filing that moment away in his mind to bring back up someday in the future.

"You remember that time you almost brought a Darth Vader riding My Little Pony cake to our wedding?  Because I remember."

Maybe I'll do that for our anniversary.  I wonder what Darth Vader would taste like in Red Velvet?

. . .

Umm...okay that was awkward.  Well, we'll all have fun unseeing both of those mental images this weekend.  I'll try to control myself better next week.

Maybe.

A tribute to Daryl Strawberry and Superman

A few weeks before the wedding, I made an appointment with the event coordinator of our wedding location to go over set up and layout, etc.  I texted my mom, who had planned to meet up with me later that day in town to go do a trial run of my hair, to see if she wanted to meet me.  I never heard from her, so I assumed she didn't want to come.

When I arrived, I met the lady and we made introductions.  Then she made a reference to needing to wait for someone with the same name as my father to arrive.

My dad?  Whaa?

I asked her what she was talking about, and she said he told her he was planning to meet us here too.

Apparently everyone in my family has stopped communicating with me.

Sure enough, as I was dialing his number to see what the heck was going on, I see his truck pulling up the drive.  Right after noticing that my mom wasn't with him, and thinking that was weird to leave her at home when we planned to meet up anyway, I saw her car.

Right behind his.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Greenpeace, the EPA, and Toyota for making the world a cleaner, less polluted place.  Because on this day, we sure weren't.

Nice Event Coordinator Lady showed us around where we'd be having our reception and the lawn where we'd be having the ceremony.  I'd provided her with a diagram of our wedding reception layout compliments of a brilliant little applet on The Knot She was very helpful in pointing out the things I didn't realize we'd need.  Like when she asked where we'd put the cake?  And I smartly replied that the cake would be on the cake table!  Then she asked me where the cake table was on my diagram.

Oh.

Nice Event Coordinator Lady scribbled in a few more things I'd forgotten on my diagram and we were on our way.

Mom and I had a few hours to kill before we drive up to Oregon City for the hair appointment so we poked around a few thrift shops in search of more table decorations.  I needed more frames for the table numbers and bottles for vases.  Do I have you scratching your head yet?

Remember the theme: Vintage G h e t t o.

We stopped at Baja Fresh for lunch.  They have this mango chipotle heaven in your mouth salad business there.  So, so good.   On our way over to the restaurant my car started making one of those noises that is akin to a human having chest pains.

Like, call 911 your car is about to blow up kind of noises.

Being the responsible car owner and mechanic that I am, I turned up the radio and kept on driving.  To my credit, when I parked the car, I did sort of kneel to the ground and look underneath the car to see if anything was hemorrhaging from up inside the guts part of the car.  I saw nothing.

I only know how to check 4 things in a car.

1) Windshield wiper fluid
2) Oil
3) Brake fluid
4) Gas

I quickly deduced that it was none of those things as it was sunny and 90 degrees outside, my first car was a Subaru with an oil leak so I know what that sounds like, my brakes were working fine (for once), and I had a full tank of gas.

So I did what any self-respecting girlfriend would do in this situation.  Texted MacGyver 15 minutes after he started his shift at work to tell him my car was "making a bad noise".

My mom and I spent lunch debating whether I should try to drive my car another 45 minutes away, or try to find a mechanic and diagnose/fix the problem.  The biggest issue was that I still had to get home to Cowtown at some point that weekend, and that was a good 2 hours away - much of it out of cell range.  I started having visions of my car going all Decepticon at 60 miles per hour, except instead of turning into a badass robot, it just flew into a million pieces scattered all over I-5.

We stopped in a Midas shop and this very nice guy offered to ride around the block with me and listen to my "bad noise".  After a few times of hearing it he told me what it was.

I don't remember now what he said it was, because all I heard was, "something something something your car isn't going to suddenly break into pieces while you're driving."

That was all I needed to hear.  I text MacGyver a quick, "just kidding!" and we were off to a hair appointment.  

I thought it would be a good idea to consult Shirley, my GPS goddess, for directions to this place as I'd never driven there from that direction.  But alas, Shirley failed me in the most epic of ways.

She took us hither and yonder, over brook and dale, over the river and through the woods to get to Oregon City.  What should have been a 30 minute drive with no traffic turned into a 90 minute ordeal of driving 20 miles an hour through every sleepy town between Salem and Oregon City.  I'm fairly certain we crossed the International Date Line at some point in that voyage.

By the time we arrived I was so frustrated I was shaking.  MacGyver's sister had asked me to bring some photos of the hairstyles I had in mind and after I finished telling her why we were late to our appointment, she asked me if I'd remembered the photos.  I realized that in my haste to JUST FREAKING GET THERE ALREADY, I had left them in the car, along with the hair pieces I made for the bridesmaids and for myself.

As I walked back out of the salon to my car, I was taking deep, calming breaths and telling myself that this day was already bad enough.  It would only get better form here.

And because I had to open my mouth and say THAT out loud, karma came and leveled me right on my ass.

I mean that in the most literal of ways.  Actually it was my face.

I'm still not exactly sure what happened either.  Just that one moment I was vertical, walking back inside with my box and my Marshmallow Man folder, and the next moment I was horizontal, face planted on the floor of the foyer in the salon.  I looked up at the two girls standing behind the counter frozen with their mouths gaping open.

What the hell...?!?!

Apparently my foot caught on the edge of a floor tile, or a leaf, or the air, or something, and I face planted in a most spectacular way.  My papers went fluttering, and my box flew across the room.  I don't know how those girls didn't lose it right there in front of me.  I don't think I would have had the same level of composure to not laugh hysterically had I been in their position.  Commendable, ladies.  Truly.

I started laughing, because I mean really, what else do you do in that situation?

When I went back to where MacGyver's sister and my mom were waiting, I told them the story and we all had a good laugh about that, though really neither of them were surprised.

I'm happy to say nothing is broken, though my leg and knees took the brunt of the fall and I'm pretty bruised up.

But my hair?  My hair is going to look soooo fabulous!!!

I'm baaaack!!!

Hello?

(*tap*tap*tap*)

Is this thing on?

My apologies for not updating this here blog in an unforgivably long time.  I don't want you to feel like I unceremoniously abandoned you, you see.  It's just...see, the thing is...well...I did.

I would like to say that my excuse for not writing lately is because an eccentric and anonymous benefactor gifted MacGyver and I with an extended honeymoon in a secret offshore tropical resort saved for only the world's most elite socialites.

But that would be a lie.  And we reserve lying for protecting a friend's self esteem, potential traffic tickets, and math placement tests.  Not that I would know anything about any of those things.  Especially that last one.

Nevermind.

The truth is, I put a lot of my regular (and extra) responsibilities on hold in the few months before the wedding because I wanted to be able to focus on getting everything done without losing my mind.  A feat I think I accomplished rather well, I will add.

In all the bride-to-be and wedding planning literature out there, there is a plethora of information about how to be calm, and ways to relax, and enjoy your special day, blah...blah...barf.

What the literature conspicuously omits is how to hit the ground running when the wedding is over and you wake up the next day to discover that your life is smuggling moonshine in the trunk from East Alabama all the way to the Bayou of Louisiana and the cops have been chasing you for the last 50 miles.  Why doesn't Louisiana make their own moonshine you ask?

BECAUSE ALABAMA MAKES SOME DAMN GOOD MOONSHINE, THAT'S WHY.

So the last few months have been a little hectic trying to get caught up on my regular work, trying to get my house put back together from the wedding that exploded into and out of every orifice, traveling to Spokane for Thanksgiving and the car blowing up, and studying for a big exam for work.

Sigh.

Also, I'd been sort of stalling/justifying my absence/whatever in hopes that I would have some of the photographer's photos back to share here, but she's been having some major computer problems and it's taking longer than she'd planned to get those to us.

But I can start without them.  It's not like I was going to recap the wedding in all it's spectacularness in one post anyway!

So now, without further ado...oh, who am I kidding?  There is always much ado.  Much ado about EVERYTHING on this blog.  And there will be more ado.  Much, much more ado.

Ado ado ado ado ado ado.

Okay I'm done.

Where did we leave off?

The bridal shower?  Seriously?  Good grief I really have been slacking.

The last time we talked I had just received a bridal shower from my coworkers of such epic proportions I am still in complete awe.

(LOVE YOU GUYS!!!)

My friend, Mrs. B, also wanted to throw me a shower for friends and family.  Mrs. B and I used to work together, and we became very good friends.  I love Mrs. B, and have developed some abandonment issues since she left, but I'm working through those.  Mrs. B is expecting a Baby B here in a few months!  It's all very exciting!  But I digress.

My mom offered to let us use her house for this shower, and my aunt (Mom's sister) who was unable to make the wedding flew all the way up from California to come!  Because she's awesome like that!  I saw her for a few hours a few years ago, and it was many years before that since I'd seen her so it was especially nice to get to visit for awhile.

Another aunt (Dad's sister), a few cousins, and some coworkers came to that one and we all had a really great time!!  Mrs. B did a month-themed shower and had each guest bring a gift that would be appropriate for the month they were given.  Super creative, and super fun!

I was overwhelmed with how much thought everyone put into each gift!  It was a really lovely shower and I had a great time.

If everything goes well, I'll be able to post pictures this spring of some of the bulbs I received as gifts from this shower.  I let MacGyver plant them to give them a better chance of survival.  Lets all keep our fingers, toes, and eyeballs crossed, shall we?