The Big Day

Well, I did it! I successfully made it through my friend's wedding. Cathy and Jared are now married...after lots of prodding from me during Community Group and I couldn't be happier! Last spring as our Community Group was winding down and they were beginning to plan their wedding, Cathy asked me to head up the decorating of the reception site. I was honored! I'm not normally the person in this family that gets asked to do such things. Normally, its my mom or my sister. Its not that I'm not capable, I just don't think it crosses people's minds because they do it so often.

I helped one night with decorations way back at the beginning of the month. Then I unwrinkled about 70 chair covers this past week. It took 3 nights of constant work! I had to unwrap them, wet them and dry them for 30 minutes or until the wrinkles were out. I could only do 6 at a time so it was quite a project! I also had to find the picture frames for Cathy that they needed for the tables. We were going to use them for table numbers but ended up just putting pictures in them. Then when I met with Cathy on Friday to go over details of the wedding, we decided that with the rain coming, we should change the location. Cathy was extremely disappointed to have to change it from the rooftop pool location to an airplane hanger. So, it was very important to me that the hanger be as pretty as possible so that she wouldn't have bad memories of her wedding day! I also realized during our meeting that the napkins would need to be folded and ironed because of how we were placing them on the tables. There were 250. It takes 1.5 minutes to iron each napkin. It took FOREVER. I didn't start those till like 9 on Friday night and finished about 3:30 am. WOW. I got up early on Saturday because I had another project to take care of before I left. I had to print/make the reserved signs for the 4 reserved tables. I left the house at 10:20...with all the napkins, all the picture frames, the reserved signs and chair covers and headed to Langley. The caterers were just setting up when I got there. So I had about 20 minutes before I got my thoughts together and was able to get my plan of attack ready before my other help got there. Amanda got there at about the same time that they started setting up chairs so we worked on the picture frames first. This was when it was still calm. Once the chairs were out...things went fast. There was a ton to do! Chair covers went out first, then the table runners and the river rocks and glass dishes, napkins and birds nests. Thankfully, Kelly and her mom got there during the chair covers, as did Jared's brother, and Amanda had brought her husband. During the table runners and river rocks, Katie, Jessi and Riley got there with the rest of the chair covers. Little Riley was so cute and really a big help! She put out the majority of the nests! After that, it was a bit or a whirl wind and we had to finish up flowers, the trees, the vestibule and clean up. WOW! It was so much work! I didn't leave Langley until 3:30 and we headed straight to the wedding. It was a BEAUTIFUL ceremony! After the ceremony, I grabbed all the pew bows I could and Reed and I got back to Langley so we could get those out! Amanda came to the rescue again as did Carlyn and they helped me get those out.  And for the record...an airplane hangar can be pretty!  It was a little bit of a different look than the pool deck but it was still pretty cool!

The reception was really nice. Reed and I left at 9:15 and then had to go get Anna in Virginia Beach. We got home at midnight!!! I was exhausted. What a weekend! I'm just now feeling normal.

Here are some pictures: