Wedding Blog

Ten days after our cross-country road trip, six days after my father and I took our engagement pictures, five days after I met our photographer, baker, and florist for the first time, we had our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.

The rehearsal was held, naturally, at our wee itty bitty church. My sisters and I were very late, even after previous admonitions from our minister to not be “that bride”. We couldn’t help it - I had lost so much weight (almost twenty five pounds) in the last two months from stress that I had literally no. clothes. that. fit. My planned outfits hung on me like a stick-insect in drag. It was awful. I managed to not cry as my sister literally safety pinned one of her dresses into looking like I wasn’t a size Richie, but the wardrobe drama still delayed Team Bride.

But, making an entrance was fun. Carrying my hand-made felt-and flower bouquet was fun. Getting told off by the minister for being late, and, later, being warned that she had a gun and a knife in the font, was not so much fun - and, actually, was rather creepy.

We ran through the processional without music the first time (not because I forgot the CD, but because the minister wouldn’t let us touch the “new” circa-1980s stereo system ). I’ll never forget walking down that two-metre aisle with the minister bellowing, “dum, dum da dum,” Longherin-style, and our wedding party awkwardly following suit.

“This is really surreal!” I yelled down the aisle.

“Just keep walking!” The minister yelled back.

I had, initially, been very impressed with our church minister. Even though we weren’t members of her congregation, at our first meeting with her she had seemed friendly, and quite “with it”. At the rehearsal, the strange, strange, things that kept popping out of her mouth had our family and friends giving each other with incredulous looks. Who was this woman, and was she going to behave like this at the wedding? Hidden weapon-references aside, I was really disappointed in the way she treated me. When she asked if I had any preferences on order and timing for the processional, I gave her the play-by-play. The church was REALLY small, so I had timed and practiced the processional timing to correspond with different parts of Pachelbel’s Canon in D. With a 30 second aisle, it was crucial that certain people started at certain times, and at certain speeds if I was to enter at that really gorgeous swell at 2:30 in the song. When I explained this to the minister, she looked at me askance, and then started guffawing. Apparently, I was a loony-tunes bride and a control freak. She tried to get our family and friends to join in, but thankfully, they were having none of her let’s-bash-on-Shortcake bit.

Eventually, Sister Shortcake’s then-boyfriend was able to commandeer the stereo system, and with my CD of Canon in D, we were able to practice the processional and my timing. And, you know what? It worked absolutely perfectly.

After the rehearsal, my family headed over to Mr. Shortcake’s house for the rehearsal dinner. Mr. Shortcake and I are huge, huge, huge fans of sushi, so a sushi-buffet was set out for the wedding party and family guests. Yum!

My maid-of-honour, Sister Shortcake and I:

(Clever pinning, eh?)

The three sisters Shortcake:

Mr. Shortcake handed out his gifts to his groomsmen first. He had been left to his own devices, and had chosen engraved cufflinks and money clips. A traditional gift, but the boys were elated - it was a first pair of cufflinks for many of them! He he!

Each of the boys were given a hand-made thank-you card, crafted from linen paper to look like the front of a tuxedo shirt:

And each of the bridesmaids present were given a linen card with a facsimile of their bouquet on the front:

(Go, left-over scrapbooking paper!)

My sisters were very impressed with their hand-made iPod holders (a shark and a raptor, hence the hand gestures):

The sushi was delicious, the party was short, and soon it was time for our guests to go home. One particularly bittersweet goodbye was said to my furbaby Harvey. At t-minus two sleeps until the wedding, I wouldn’t see him again until after the honeymoon (he was staying with Mr. Shortcake’s parents’ house):

T-minus two sleeps? Time was passing so fast! My sisters and I hurried home to get ready for the next night’s festivities:

The bachelorette!