we had a bit of a crazy week planned before the wedding: much of our family and many friends were arriving from out of the area so most of the festivities were happening right before the wedding. it ended up being a bit of a whirlwind but i had taken the week off of work and it was fun. two of my four bridesmaids stayed with me at my soon-to-be-mil's house and helped finish up those last-minute wedding things: making favors, programs, that kind of thing. my mom was also nearby at a hotel with my grandparents and aunt and uncle, and my sister was going to stay with her since we had a full house and a cat (she's allergic) at mil's.
we got married on a sunday, so we did my bridal shower on a thursday, at mil's house. my lovely, 9-months-pregnant bridesmaid kirsten came over early to help set things up and i zipped off to the airport to pick up my sister. she was flying in from kazakhstan where she had been the previous four weeks, on a missions trip. it was so good to see her, and she cleaned up pretty nicely in record time. i was amazed at how she held up, considering she had been travelling (or at least, awake) for the past 22 hours and was on a completely opposite time zone from california.
the food was delicious and the girls set everything up so beautifully. i wish i had a picture of the decorations.
me, my grandmother, and my future mil bonnie. i have been blessed with a truly amazing family, not only the ones i'm "stuck" with (my blood relatives) but also the ones i chose (my in-laws).
then the games began. wow, get a bunch of ladies together in a room and we sure do get silly. first kirsten had us make wedding-themed "sculptures" out of pink and blue play-doh. kerry won that game with her husband-and-wife bobblehead cake-toppers. (brian eats, sleeps, and breathes baseball and i had originally looked for actual bobbleheads for our cake topper. i found them, but with a price tag of about $350. we ended up nestling an actual baseball in a bed of flowers.)
next up was identifying the mysterious white powders (no, not anthrax!). some of them were easy, but the entire game was harder than it looked initially.
that's all three generations of girls in my immediate family: my sister, my grandmother, myself, and my mother, all stumped on those powders. don't worry, i didn't hog it! we all got our turns to peer closely at the powders.
then kirsten had everyone draw my "wedding photo" - on their heads, without looking! it was silly to watch everyone trying to draw with pencils poking through the papers into their hair. there was lots of moaning and giggling.
this is mil and kirsten. i'm pretty sure kirsten's drawing won.
lastly was the one game i had specifically requested, toilet-paper bride. i just love toilet paper bride. it is such a nutty game. bonnie had a bunch of colored toilet paper so that made the game a lot of fun.
much good-natured moaning and groaning from my mother ("how am i supposed to do this?!") as she made my grandmother into a beautiful bride. it has been a lot of years since grandma has been a bride, but i think grandpa would think she was just as beautiful as a toilet-paper bride as she was on her wedding day.
kerry and alice really concentrated on making alice a great dress! my sister is the fashionista in the family and alice has super style sense also so they made a great team. they won, by the way.
all those beautiful ladies really decked me out in some scandalous "nighties." is that stuff really for me or is it for the husband-to-be? no photos of those!
it was such a lovely day - very emblematic of our entire wedding events. i did not feel so much like a princess (center of attention) as i just felt loved. here was all my family and friends who loved me and my fiancé so much and just wanted to share our special commitment and help make it special and memorable to us. i think that's what a wedding (and a life!) ought to be about, really.
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