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So, where was I? Oh yes, I had just finished helping DIY our wedding flowers all day the Thursday before our wedding, and rushed to meet Mr. Cola at the hotel to unpack my car and change for our wedding weekend kick-off party!All our bridesmaids and groomsmen, plus a couple of extra friends met in our suite at 4:30pm, and we passed out their gifts, contacts list and schedules for the weekend (all organized and with important times/places highlighted, of course!). All the gifts were a huge hit, and I was really happy about my decision to include Coach purses as one of the BM gifts, because a certain bridesmaid was in need of a new purse, since hers had to be thrown away after getting destroyed during our Wednesday night outing.
Once our wedding party stashed their gifts in their hotel rooms, we met in the hotel lobby and grabbed cabs to downtown San Mateo (which took forever, and we learned from then on to call for cabs in advance). We enjoyed a delish dinner of pizza and beer at Zorba’s Pizza, although we did have to rush through eating a little because we were on a schedule! Luckily I’d arranged for our pizzas to be ready when we arrived.
While Mr. Cola and I picked up the bill for dinner, some of our friends made a beer run to a grocery store across the way from the train we were taking into San Francisco for the night. This is when I had my first heart attack of the night, when I couldn’t find my sister and her boyfriend a few minutes before the train was to arrive; they’d started heading back to the restaurant after going to the store, and I had to call her cell and tell them where to run to make the train.
It’s about a 35 minute ride into San Francisco, and we enjoyed some more drinks on our ride up.
As I’d mentioned, we were on a tight schedule. We’d bought tickets for our wedding party to take a 7pm sunset cruise on the bay, and the train arrived in San Francisco at 6:39pm. However, what should have been a 5 minute cab ride to the boat dock turned into a crazy dash to find three cabs to fit everyone, rush hour traffic, and general confusion because people weren’t listening when I told them where to go once we got to the boat docks.I was in the first cab to leave the train station, with everyone’s tickets, assumedly so I could get there first and make sure the boat didn’t leave without everyone. But somehow Mr. C’s cab passed us and got there first, and everyone sprinted to the boat dock (this being about 7:05pm by now). And then I had to almost have my second heart attack of the night, when we’d not only lost our 3rd cab of people, but our officient friend and his girlfriend who were meeting us weren’t there either!Talk about stress, we’d paid over $500 for these tickets, 1/3rd of our party wasn’t there, and the boat cruise employees were already not happy with us. I just remember Mr. Cola on the phone with one of the lost groomsmen yelling, “You gotta run man! I can see you at the other end of the dock, run dude, run toward the sea lions, they’re taking off without you guys!!!” And I was standing there, half on and half off the boat, trying to decide if we ditch our friends and go on the cruise, or get everyone else off the boat and ditch our night’s plans and the money we’d spent on the tickets.Anyway, thankfully everyone sprinted quickly enough, and the boat’s employees waited, and we were able to cast off about 15 minutes late, so my second heart attack was averted. I still owe Adventure Cat Charters a great Yelp review, not only are we extremely thankful they waited for us (although, after all, we were half of their boat load), but it was also a fantastic little cruise.Once we cast off, I passed out everyone’s drink tickets (two drinks each were included in the ticket price), and we could finally relax! We headed out past the far side of Alcatraz Island, sailed under the Golden Gate bridge and back, enjoyed the sunset, and came back in along the San Francisco waterfront. Again, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves!
(Thank goodness I decided against the 4 1/2" heels I'd planned on wearing, I wouldn't have been able to run to get on the boat! And keeping my dress from blowing up in the wind was hard enough without having to worry about keeping my balance in heels.)
After the hour and a half cruise ended, everyone was a little indecisive as to how to spend the rest of the night, since we’d left it up to our wedding party to pick what they wanted to do. Eventually we ended up at 21st Amendment for a couple drinks, followed by taking a late train back to the hotel, and hanging out in our suite for a couple more hours.
(One of our crazy groomsmen, the one who Mr. Cola was yelling at to run to get on the boat, kept his pizza leftovers through the ride up to the city, the sprint to the boat, on the cruise, took it to the bar, and proudly still had the leftovers on the train ride home. The next morning, the box was still uneaten, and left in our hotel suite!)
It's Recapicola time! :)And I'm going to officially start our recaps with the Thursday night before the wedding, since that's when pretty much all the projects and prep ended and the fun pre-wedding events began.But before we dive right in, I wanted to give you all my #1 tip now that my wedding day is over: add more time!I really, really wish we’d added an extra hour or two to our reception length. Our 5pm ceremony, 5:20-6:20 cocktail hour (which, as you’ll find out, we didn’t get to enjoy at all), and 6:20-10pm (well, really 9:30pm, because that’s when Mr. Cola and I left) reception was SO not long enough!It’s completely true what everyone says, your wedding day will go by in a flash.
What I didn’t hear about was why it goes by so quickly, and for me it was because all our guests wanted to talk to me. Seriously, I felt like everyone wanted a piece of me, and I was constantly pulled in a million different directions all night long. We tried to go from table to table as people were finishing their dinner, and we got through all the family tables (except my cousins), to get the chatting out of the way early, but family still continued to monopolize our time throughout the reception. Which I understand--everyone wants to congratulate the bride and groom at their wedding. Or spend 15 minutes discussing cupcake flavors. Or stop me as I try to just go to the restroom and talk about who-knows-what for a half hour, as I shift from foot to foot ‘cause I gotta go. I get it. And I don't hold it against anyone.But the fact still remains that I felt like I never really got to enjoy some aspects of our reception for more than a minute here or there. I spent maybe 4 total minutes in our fauxtobooth. And other than our first dance, Mr. Cola and I never got to dance again the whole night. I was stretched so thin that I never really had a chance to notice some of the DIY aspects that I worked so hard on, like our choose your favor table (thank goodness for photos, right?).In retrospect, the not dancing thing bums me out the most, even though we’re not at all big dancing people, and neither are a lot of our friends. But because we never had a chance to go back out on the dance floor, meant that not too many other people danced either, since we weren’t there to take the lead and set the mood. I’m so glad we decided to have an after party in our hotel suite, for a chance to finally talk to and hang out with our friends, because we hardly got to see them at the reception. The after party was a blast, and the next best thing to having more time at our reception! :)So that’s my biggest, most important tip. Add an extra hour to your reception if you can. Even if you initially think it will be enough time, trust me, it won’t be. And if you can’t add more time for whatever reason, an after party is a great way to extend your night, and party with people you didn’t get to spend time with earlier in the evening.Now, about these recaps.
I can't wait to share everything, because our wedding was freakin' awesome (which is obviously why I wish it had lasted longer)! I’m thinking I’ll go into the pre-wedding events first, then get the nitty-gritty “what went wrong” post out of the way, and by then I'll have our pro pics and be able to move on with the day-of details. I’m a fan of chronological recaps, so I hope you all don’t mind if I do it that way. And I’ll try my best to link back to all of my tutorials and DIY posts as I show the final results, in case anyone has any questions.Sound good?And since I don't quite know how to end this post, I'll leave you with two of my favorite non-pro detail photos, one taken by a bridesmaid of the beading on my dress, and the second taken by a guest, featuring my DIY wedding shoes!
Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:
- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress
- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves
- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
- A day of DIY'ing flower arrangements
Leslye,
Happy wedding day! I know it's going to be a gorgeous day up in Poulsbo, Washington!
I hope your wedding day is everything you hoped for and more. I hope you are surrounded by friends and loved ones, coming together to celebrate your marriage to your soon-to-be husband. I hope your day is drama free, and full of laughter. And most of all, I hope you find the time during the night to pause with your new husband, and just take it all in! It will be over in a flash!
Lots of love on your big day,
Morgan
After a fun Wednesday night, I woke up early Thursday morning, and spent some time making sure everyone at our house was alive and awake, before heading to mom’s to start arranging the flowers we had bought the previous morning. As it turned out, I was the only person not in any pain from partying the night before, and had actually gotten more sleep Wednesday night than any other night the previous week! My bridesmaid stayed behind at our house to recover, and the guy’s plan for the day was to go pick up another groomsman at the airport, give him a tour of San Francisco, get the Uhaul truck to the hotel, and check us in.Once I grabbed coffee, I joined the flower arranging party. I was trusted with the very challenging 21 cocktail table/inside table arrangements, but even I, with my black thumb, could handle rocks, an orchid, two leaves and water in a small vase!
In the 6 hours I was around to help we managed to finish a little less than half the flowers--all the small table centerpieces (except for sandwiching the sliced limes between the inner and outer vases, which happened closer to the wedding), cocktail and indoor table arrangements, bridesmaid purse bouquets, my ceremony and toss bouquets, ceremony aisle arrangements, and got started on arranging the tall centerpieces.
Here's a couple sneak peeks of the finished small table arrangements, taken on our wedding day by my bridesmaid, Heather:
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My mom and aunt, who had taken professional floral arranging classes at a nearby college did most of the work though, and I'm pretty sure we couldn't have pulled this off without them knowing what they were doing. Just having the right supplies (foam, wire, etc) is so important--wedding flower arranging is so much more than just stuffing some stems in a vase! You need to have a game plan for timing and storage, have done mock ups so you buy enough flowers, and have an understanding of how to balance the colors and textures you're using in the arrangements.
My great aunt and I tried the best we could to assist by taking leaves off of stems, watering finished arrangements, tying ribbon to hang the aisle arrangements, and putting leaves in the floral foam so the arranging experts could place flowers around them. My mom and aunt did a wonderful job, as you’ll see more of in my day-of recaps. So many of our wedding guests commented on our flowers, and were shocked to find out they were 100% DIY.
One of the bridesmaid purse bouquets:
My gorgeous bouquet:
At some point in there we ate lunch and my sister, her boyfriend (also our ceremony guitarist and DJ) and her dog arrived from Washington. Before I knew it it was 3:30pm, so I loaded my wedding dress and veil into my car, and headed down the hill to meet Mr. Cola at the hotel. I only had an hour left to unpack and change before we were kicking off the weekend with our Wedding Party Welcome Event!Miss any wedding week details? Catch up here:- I packed an emergency bag that saved my dress- We had a crazy 4 days prepping for house guests and stuffing favors- Shopping for a ton of wedding flowers to arrange ourselves- Mr. Cola drinks a 40 and I have a night out on the town for our low-key bach parties
(all pictures in this post are personal photos, taken by myself, my family, or our wedding party)
The Wednesday afternoon before our wedding, after leaving the freshly purchased wedding flowers prep to my family, Mr. Cola and I, along with three members of our wedding party grabbed lunch, and then loaded all of this into our Uhaul truck and the trunks of our two cars.
At this point I was beginning to feel like a zombie again, since I’d only had about 8 total hours of sleep in the past 72 hours, so I went and tried to take a nap, while the guys went to the store to stock up on drinks for that night. They were going to hang out at our house and play pool, while my BM Heather had a night out planned for the two of us.This is what was already going on when I woke up from my short nap. They'd apparently gotten an early start!
We ordered take out for dinner, and then my BM and I got dressed for going out. She had arranged for a town car to drive us around for the night!
After stopping at an ATM, and backtracking to my house to get my driver’s license (duh, fancy bars actually check these things, unlike my usual dive bar haunts), we sampled some of the wine our driver had provided.
We hit one bar in downtown San Jose, two on Santana Row, and then one up in Palo Alto, over the course of about 5 hours. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves!
(Our driver bought us roses between one of our stops.)
(unless otherwise noted, all pictures in this post are personal photos, taken by myself or our wedding party)
(Thank goodness I decided against the 4 1/2" heels I'd planned on wearing, I wouldn't have been able to run to get on the boat! And keeping my dress from blowing up in the wind was hard enough without having to worry about keeping my balance in heels.)
(One of our crazy groomsmen, the one who Mr. Cola was yelling at to run to get on the boat, kept his pizza leftovers through the ride up to the city, the sprint to the boat, on the cruise, took it to the bar, and proudly still had the leftovers on the train ride home. The next morning, the box was still uneaten, and left in our hotel suite!)
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