The weather on Friday morning. Damp, dewy, cool.

Still adjusting to the manicure. (Even today, I'm still adjusting to texting with it.)

Trader Joe's for flowers. My plan: buy a bunch of bouquets that were roughly in my color scheme. At Trader Joe's, they are about $3.99 a bouquet. Divide them up. Start anew. My budget: $150. The price we were looking at when we were going to go to a florist: $400-500. Ah, but I worked in a florist shop for years as a teenager. I figured I knew how to arrange some flowers. Despite the best efforts of half of my other vendors, I was not intimidated. (If you're wondering, the final tally was $70. You'll see the results shortly.)

We went to a second Trader Joe's for for variety, and then Meijer for good measure.

The flowers waited in the car while we stopped for breakfast at Hardee's/

My assistant florist had a lot of input about what flowers worked together.

My bouquet, in progress.

Ta-daaa!

My other florist assistant was also helpful.

I made bridesmaid bouquets special for each one. Left to right: my sister's MOH bouquet, Nikki's, Granny's, Renee's.

Nikki's.

Mine.

Katie's.

Granny's.

Katie's.

Nikki's.

Katie's.

They ended up safe and sound in my mom's fridge overnight.

And on to the rehearsal. It was interesting. Rebecca (Julie Andrews) led it, and it was weird and kind of pointless because the room that it was in was nothing like the actual ceremony room, and we went through the beginning, middle, beginning again, end, middle, beginning again...I spent the rest of the night and the next day fielding questions from people that the rehearsal had created. Even I was clearer before it. Everyone left with questions. It was weird, stressful, and confusing. It was supposed to last half an hour. It lasted an hour and a half. Eric's mom was at the community center that we'd rented for the rehearsal dinner setting up and getting very lonely.

Rehearsal dinner.

And back to Granny's after the rehearsal dinner. Stay tuned fooorrrr...wedding day!

Thursday 11-8-12

Thursday was the day that things really got real. First order of business was bringing all of our stuff like centerpieces, signature mat, ring-bearer pillow, etc. to the venue for the drop-off. There we met Rebecca, a coordinator who looked a lot like Julie Andrews, and she had the stern/efficient demeanor down. I won't lie, I was kind of scared of her. The couple before us pretty much got told to go home and start over, because they had done their shopping on Wednesday. Nothing was assembled, they'd forgotten half their stuff, had too much of other stuff... Luckily, we had all of ours "right" and got to go about our way without being yelled at by Julie Andrews.

They gave us this super handy wire rack for bringing all of our stuff in.

 

Next, we went to try on/pick up Eric's tux. I had never seen him in a tux before.

I was not really prepared for how amazing he would look. This picture is the wallpaper on my phone now.

We went to the mall to get my eyebrows threaded (ouch), and then a manicure, and then lunch. The manicure really took some getting used to - I occasionally had my nails done as a teenager and hated it. At first, I still hated it. Now, a week and a half later, I'm planning to get a fill-in in a few days. So they did eventually grow on me.

Then it was back to the tux place to get the best man and one of the groomsmen into their tuxes. Above is Eric's younger brother, Adam, the best man.

And his cousin, James.

Stay tuned for Friday's round-up, tomorrow!