wedding week ~ one year ago today ~ part 2

~friday july 21, 2017 ~wedding eve!~

friday morning found the bride wielding a toilet plunger; nothing like extra house guests flushing extra toilet paper to help prevent excess bridal vanity. so many times during the week, i felt thankfulness for my wedding boss, who had helped me include helpful things such as “water garden” on my list, knowing i would not be able to do so again until after the tent got taken down. so, with the toilet back in working order, i turned on the sprinkler to water my still mostly green rainbow garden.

children in various states from bright eyed and bushy tailed to still a little sleepy lounged on the wood floor in the living room, each communing with their own customized lego pirate ship. quinn filled me in on details later, and told me b and z pancake each had one, luigi had one, and mario and quinn shared the fourth. he also told me about the particular crew and accessories that each kid brought on board, whether they specialized in dwarves or star wars characters, weapons and gear or food and flowers. the girls appreciated having hermione/princess leia parts to construct their captains from, and the only brief dispute i ever heard about was over the lego pizza getting jammed into the scuppers and being difficult to remove.

for a little while, rich and i sat together outside to go over some vows and some music choices, while hummingbirds zoomed around in the honeysuckle nearby. then we headed down to the wedding trees to set up some ropes for draping pretty fabric. since i have nautical experience, i was nominated to head up the ladder to tie knots, and since rich has big muscles, he was nominated to hold the ladder at its base. this also gave him his preferred viewing angle of his bride to be.

a certain game involving minecraft terminology was played while running around the yard, and the boys (all of whom were fluent in minecraft-speak) began referring to the wedding trees (the other nickname for the site we were decorating) as the “portal to the overworld,” which seemed like a nice way of looking at it.

once the trees were bedecked with fabric and best woman was chopping yellow peppers and purple cabbage and the big tent was set up in the yard, we sat with our parents for a while until my mom mentioned that she had always thought it would be fun to jump on a trampoline, but that she had never done it before. rich’s mom remembered having a small exercise trampoline and rich could remember it from when he was a kid. she said she always enjoyed it. i can’t remember who finally said, “well, here we are right next to a trampoline, no time like the present!” and instigated the moms getting on the trampoline. i got on first, and after my dad’s protective but brief, “absolutely not!” speech, he relented and helped mom up into the enclosure with me. she would have been satisfied just getting to bounce from seated position, but then we tried kneeling, and she felt like with me to hold onto, she could try standing up to bounce. it was great! then she sat back down while i did the same thing with rich’s mom, and by the end all three of us were holding hands in a circle, laughing and bouncing. rich’s mom disembarked (his dad decided not to risk it with his artificial knees) and dad came on with mom and i. after mom got off, dad really let himself jump (he even did a butt bounce! like one of the kids), and again, some of the best memories were made while we took a break from making our final wedding day preparations. grandsons in witness to the event were cheering on grammy and grampy the whole time.

(many photo credits in this post to my best woman!)

i also had some fun jumping with my fiance for one more day.

mother-of-wedding-boss (aka grammie e) brought us some blue hydrangeas from her yard, and picked up the money and list and buckets she would need for picking up flowers from the farmer’s market the next morning. again with the amazing crew! rich’s mom would also hit the market on her way in to the wedding (which also turned into chauffeuring one of my photographers from her hotel) to pick up strawberries and salad greens.

sometime that afternoon, a committee meeting was held in the hammock, but otherwise we kept busy with setting up tables and chairs, taking down the clothesline, setting up canopies, sorting out chopped veggies into coolers, brewing iced tea, sewing more prayer flags to a ribbon, staging boxes and totes of wedding gear in the shed ready to set up in the tent, and enjoying one another’s company. throughout the day, i would be handed a sandwich or a glass of water at just the right moment by my best woman, look around to find rich’s son had swept the entire outside of the house without being asked, and find others supporting me in all the possible ways they could. most of all, the man i was going to marry the next day!!!

at the time appointed by the box next to “rehearsal dinner,” my sister in law picked up pizzas,  jeany arrived and went over the script with rich and i to finalize wording, and the family members talked through their order in the procession the next day.

committee meeting in the straw bales

the next box on the list held the words, “evening shower for mb,” and i dutifully obeyed my orders.

that night after dark, my fiance and i spent our final hours as fiances going up the ladder some more, hanging up big paper lanterns in the tent, setting out boxes of tablecloths and jars, hanging up prayer flags, and getting our loveseat in place at our reception table. then we tucked each other in one last time before our wedding day!