our wedding: the morning of

Stressful tent preparations set aside, the morning of the wedding was... okay, I can't even lie, it was crazy and hectic. Even aside from the tents, there were still millions of things that needed to be done. So to say that I was relaxed would be a nice fantasy, but it would be a big fat lie.

Actually, I take that back, being relaxed was far from my fantasy. For as long as we'd been planning the wedding, I'd been told both my people in our lives and by the online community of brides, to hire a day-of coordinator. In a style true to myself, I'd declined. Repeatedly. I caved once and started pricing the ones around our area after being convinced that I needed one. Thankfully, their $500+ price tag snapped me back into reality and back to our original vision.

I didn't want a stranger handling all the details on our wedding day. I understand why brides do it, and for those who do, all the power to them. But it's wasn't for us. I wanted to get my hands dirty, even on the day of. I wanted to be involved in every single minute of it. Partly because we'd spent so much time planning that I wanted to prevent things from going wrong if I could.

But mostly, it was because I wanted to remember every second of our day. I wanted to know and remember everything that happened. Maybe that's a little crazy, but I didn't want everyone doing things backstage while I sat around.

I also think this approach helped calm my nerves. If I'd sat around all morning thinking about walking down the aisle in front of 80 people, my stage fright likely would have kicked in and I would have been a nervous wreck. When I get worried, nervous, or upset, I work to keep myself busy. It's a compartmentalizing method that I have perfected over the years.

But of course, I knew I couldn't do everything myself. As long as I was involved, I was happy. So we took a DIT approach to the wedding day. I knew I couldn't DIY the entire wedding day, but doing things together made sense to me. The morning of our wedding, we were surrounded by friends and family who were more than willing to help us out, so we took advantage of that.

Mr. FP and his boys were running around setting up the photo booth, signs to mark the way to the cottage and any other last minute details. The girls and I were trying to organize the candy buffet, the guest book, and icing the cupcakes...

Oh, the cupcakes. They'd been made for 4 days, frozen in my grandmother's freezer, and had survived the long trip to the cottage. Plus, they looked really yummy. The problem? We had no icing. Oh, we'd bought plenty. Way more than we needed in fact. But somewhere along the way, it had been misplaced. Crap. Double crap. What the hell are we going to do without icing?!? We all ran around in a blind panic for a good solid 20 minutes only to get a call from Mr. FP (who was down the road hanging up directional signs) telling us that the icing was in his car.

Ah, sweet relief. 10 minutes later, icing in hand, some of us started icing the yummy cupcakes. Some of us iced and the others rotated the use of the shower. The poor shower, it got such a workout that morning. Typically, we just wash our hair in the river when we stay at the cottage, so with a steady rotation of 5 girls who needed to be cleaned, we were slightly concerned that the shower would go on strike. Thankfully, 20 minute breaks between girls seemed to do the trick and the shower pulled through.

The icing process also went swimmingly. We ended up settling on 4 different flavor cupcakes: swiss chocolate, french vanilla, carrot, and rainbow bits. And 4 different icing flavors complimented them nicely. Of course, we had to taste test them before hand to ensure that the quality was up to par. It was. And they turned out to be the perfect wedding morning treat for the girls.

I, on the other hand passed on the cupcakes because I hadn't felt like eating for the past 24 hours. Terrible, I know. But my beautiful bridesmaid M didn't like that at all. And being the sweet (and surprisingly threatening) girl that she is, she promptly forced me to eat a banana.

Since the wedding was set to start at 3, we made a hard and fast rule that whatever needed to be completed had to be done by noon. If things weren't done, they didn't get done. This rule saved our mental sanity. Yes, details got left behind. I'd made a banner for the reception tent that never got put up, but those 3 hours before the wedding were so unbelievably nice that I'm glad we made that rule.

Although the getting ready process wasn't exactly relaxing, it was nice to have the time right before the ceremony set aside for things like makeup and hair rather than table cloths and pom poms. Have I mentioned the hours and hours of agonizing paper folding yet?!