Weddingbee

I didn’t disappear! I apologize, hive, for my slacking in the blogging department. I could give you all sorts of excuses on why I haven’t started my wedding recap yet, but the important thing is I’m back and ready to share some stories!

First off, let me just say that I L-O-V-E being married. All of the planning, the stressing, the hours upon hours of putting this thing together was worth it not only for the day, but also for all the days that have followed it. Mr. T and I have now been married for one month, and I can’t tell you how wonderful it has been. I keep having this feeling like I’m on a fabulous vacation that I don’t want to end… and then I remember that this is for good! Waking up in the morning next to my best friend and falling asleep next to him at night- it doesn’t get any better.

But back to that hard work part… in my very first post as a bee, I mentioned that we were renting a lawn and “building our wedding from the ground up”. Well I didn’t really mean that as literally as these next few pictures show, but here’s how things shaped up on the Thursday before our Saturday wedding…

My Mom and I relaxed on the porch of the house and watched while our tent was put up in 85 degree heat (yes! in Maine!):

Ta-da! Our 40 x 120 Century tent in all its 5-peaked glory:

But I don’t want you to think that I just sat around and let the tent guys do all of the hard work. You see, we encountered a tiny little problem when we arrived at our reception site - the porta-potty company had taken it upon themselves to deliver their goods a day early - which was great - but since there was no one there to show them where to, uh, put the pots, they decided that right in front of the house would be a good spot. Not exactly what I was envisioning for wedding day decor (they didn’t even match the color scheme). So I did what any DIY-conditioned bride would do, and I moved ’em.

With a little help from Mr. Tiramisu of course:

(Don’t worry, they were empty.)

We decided to go with the crappy and cheap porta-potties instead of the nice trailer kind, because we knew very few of the guests would end up using them. They were hidden down near the woods behind the tent and ended up working out just fine. I know a lot of the men used them, and I’m betting that most of the women who used the inside bathrooms never even knew they existed. And now I get to say that I pushed two porta-potties two-hundred feet across the lawn of our reception site: no one better ever accuse me of being a bridezilla.

Next up in the taking matters into our own hands category came the hanging of the infamous paper lanterns. I have to admit, even after all of my research and test runs of the LED throwie-lit paper lanterns, I was a little worried about the execution. We decided to take some time on Thursday night to figure out how best to hang the lanterns. We used heavy-duty fishing line to hang them from the center poles of the tent out to the sides, and then between all of the center poles. Here’s how it looked with just a few strings of lights up:

I just loved how they looked! Here’s a sneak peek of (almost) all 150 of them in action on the wedding day:

For anyone considering doing this, I would say go for it. The lanterns made a big impact, and yes it was time-consuming (we had a pretty big team of people and it still took us about two hours to get them all up on Friday morning), but definitely do-able. Don’t pay someone thousands of dollars to do this for you!

By Thursday night a lot of our out-of-town guests had arrived and it was really sinking in that our wedding had finally arrived. From that point on, I sort of went into this la-la land state that I didn’t emerge from until well after it was all said and done. I had a perma-smile glued to my face, and there just wasn’t anything that could get me down. On Friday, all of our friends had arrived and I spent the afternoon catching up with my best friends and getting ready for the rehearsal and party.

Ok, I know this photo is a total blurry mess, but I think you can see exhibit A of the smile that wasn’t to leave my face for the next 48 hours:

Next time on The Time of Our Lives… we rehearse, Miss Tiramisu smiles some more, Mr. Tiramisu reveals his fabulous groomsmen gifts, and the lights go out (for the first time).

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