I'm the one in the big white dress. No, the other one.

We arrived at the ceremony about 10 minutes before it was scheduled to start, popped out of the limo, and ran inside to freshen up and see our families. The little boys were dressed in their tuxes and the crowd was settling in! Right on time someone let us know that the pianist was starting in on the song we agreed would be the mothers’ entrance. We realized in this moment that we wanted to delay a little, to give people time to get settled. But it was just like it was all in motion and there was no stopping it…and so we forged ahead.

I hardly remember the ceremony itself, which I suppose is why people advocate getting a wedding video. We did have a friend video informally, so hopefully that will be enough for us. Pretty much I think it went exactly according to plan. We realized at the rehearsal that the two of us and the minister were the only ones who had any idea what was in the ceremony, which was kind of accidental fun. Meagan’s rendition of Gandhi/Buddha was lovely, the benediction worked great from the back as we had chosen at the rehearsal, and oddly people weren’t too squished in the church. I still haven’t quite figured out if a lot of people were standing at the back or if people skipped the ceremony or what exactly happened to make that work, but I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. I was a little sad that we ended up missing the postlude (in addition to the prelude, but we’d talked about expecting that). It’s strange to put time and effort into choosing things that you don’t see or hear!

We did the whole receiving line thing, which was a bit long, but was actually nice to be able to see all of the faces that we’d both been avoiding looking at in the church (it’s really weird to stand up in front of everybody!) Then we headed outside for some outdoor formal pictures. Other people complained about being cold, so I guess the fact that I was not is testament to a combination of the unseasonably warm November weather and the adrenaline. Not to mention the excessively heavy big white dress (side note: I have no idea how people get married in the summer. I would die of heatstroke.)



The limo ride back to the mansion was much more relaxed and jovial. We cracked open the Asti and the string cheese. Yum.

When we arrived we greeted a few people and then ran upstairs to freshen and fluff. A lovely friend brought up a plate of appetizers. We returned downstairs and mingled until dinner. As we were being called to the tables I complained (somewhat bitterly, no shame here!) to my mom about having not been able to taste the spanakopita-type appetizer. The amazing coordinator at the mansion overheard me, and appeared at the head table a few minutes later with a whole plate of them!

After sitting down to dinner for a while someone realized that we did not have a centerpiece at the head table. We had planned to use our bouquets for the centerpiece… which meant that the bouquets were busy cruising around Minneapolis in the trunk of the limo we had dismissed for the evening. Winning major customer service points again, the mansion coordinator apparently managed to track them down for us and before we hardly even knew it we were reunited with our bouquets.

Our fathers, maids of honor, and Miss Becky herself all gave loving toasts. I still can’t quite believe Becky let me stand by my declaration that I didn’t want to talk, but if I say that too much she’ll start to think I owe her one or something! The food was delicious. At the urging of my sister, Becky and I attempted to circulate and socialize in between the courses. This turned out to be a good thing, but we started too late and did an unfortunate job of pacing ourselves, which sadly meant that we didn’t have time to make it to all the tables – in particular the tables where some of our young friends were sitting. I think one big regret that we both have is that we weren’t able to spend more time talking to some of our younger friends who traveled to the wedding and who we don’t get to see very often. Overall I think we did pretty well for two introverts. But, between all of the things we were juggling and the fact that several people ended up leaving earlier than we expected we really missed out on a few, which does make us sad. (Yes, we’ve talked about this ad nauseum, so I can definitely speak for Becky too.)

They forced us (hehe) to cut into our gorgeous cake, and we fed each other a few bites of the pumpkin layer. It turned out to be the majority of the wedding cake I ended up eating, because we were so busy. Becky’s cousin’s four year old daughter was our most attentive guest, as she had apparently been drooling over the cake all evening. Her mom also brought her up to us at one point because she wanted to share with us her adorable observation that “I have the same dress as you.” Mine cost more, kiddo! Seriously though, it was a little trippy to be (one of) the one (s) in a big white dress being idolized by a kid in the princess stage of development.

And then there was dancing. And more dancing. As mentioned earlier, people cleared out a little earlier than we expected, but a decent group stayed and danced until the end. We had a lot of fun rocking out to a pretty eclectic mix of music – including John Denver’s Thank God I’m A Country Boy – which was the one song all evening that caused Becky’s sisters to come RUNNING to the dance floor.

We had planned to leave before the end and have a send off with bubbles. My mom had painstakingly tied personalized ribbons around them for us, even. But it just didn’t really fit into the evening. Casualty of the dance, I suppose.

The next morning we re-grouped at my parents’ house for quiche and the best chocolate cheesecake ever (plus some other food, including birthday cake in honor of Becky’s sister Jenny). We opened gifts and generally enjoyed the afterglow. And then finally, later than expected, we jetted down to Hastings for two much needed decompression days. That’ll probably be another post too, just what you always wanted!