I promise

The wedding on Saturday was wonderful. Congratulations to Lauren and David on a beautiful marriage and an amazing reception. While my part was pretty insignificant (the thrill being running downstairs to grab the toss bouquet and running it back upstairs) I still learned a lot about wedding planning in general, and have taken a lot with me as I keep pushing for our own wedding.

Yesterday I made a master checklist of everything to pack, from the bridal portrait to the honeymoon, I've got four pages of double-columned items to not forget. I'm sure I'll be adding to the list in the next few months.

We also crossed a huge item off our list because we sat down and wrote our wedding vows! They're a little untraditional, in that they're not going to be "I promise to do this and this and never do this and always do this" but they will be beautiful and meaningful nonetheless.

I have an appointment/consultation scheduled on Friday with a lady who has had 30 years experience doing hair and makeup. She's really sweet, and just up the road, both from us and the Abbey. Her son even got married at the Abbey, so she's definitely had experience with the things we will be dealing with come wedding day. Her prices are really reasonable, too. I hope everything goes well and I can book her on the spot. Now I just have to gather pictures of what I think I want my hair to look like so I can give her an idea.

This morning I was on call at work and they didn't need me, so I've been home trying to do little odd jobs that need doing for the wedding. So I assembled centerpieces. 17 wreaths were painstakingly put together, each one following a distinct pattern so that they were all uniform in appearance and size. My fingers hurt now. But it's one less thing to do come October.

There are a few things I still haven't figured out, like the rehearsal dinner and accompanying invites. Justin, Texas just isn't a hoppin place for good food. I don't even know if they have a restaurant in the town... Of course, this also means I haven't been able to design invites to said rehearsal dinner. Maybe I'll just make them the same as the wedding ones, since we have a whole lot more of them than we need. But I'd like to make them cute/different, so we'll see.

The thing that I'm most puzzled about is the seating plan for the reception. Originally, we weren't going to have a seating plan, but space is so tight at our venue that if we don't delegate who sits with who we could wind up with single empty chairs at each table, forcing a family to break up and sit alone at a table of people they don't really know. So now I have to come up with a cute idea for telling everyone where they'll be sitting. Of course, I can't even begin to think about it until I know who is coming and who isn't. I did sit down the other day and arrange tables assuming every single person we invited is coming, but even that's not realistic because one family that declines means rearranging it all again. At least I know it can be done. I think.