Wedding Blog

This will be a picture-less post, as I will be focusing on the one snafu in what could’ve been a perfect wedding day: NYC traffic.

NYC traffic on a Friday afternoon is pretty bad. NYC traffic on a Friday afternoon when various VIPs are in town is worse. Who exactly was in Manhattan on the day of my wedding? Let me give you the list, along with my mother’s reactions.

• The Pope: “Your wedding is a blessing from God!” (We’re not Catholic.)
• The President of South Korea: general happy freak-outs because we’re Korean.
• The British Prime Minister: “He is not as handsome as Hugh Grant.” (She loves the movie Love Actually.)
• Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in preparation for the Democratic presidency campaigns: “Do you think they can come to the wedding?”

Fortunately, the bridal party got around without too much delay because we had given ourselves an extra hour of padding in the schedule. However, the bus that we had charted to shuttle our NYC guests to our venue got the worst of it.

The bus was scheduled to arrive at The Fountainhead at 6:00PM. Its actual time of arrival was 7:30PM, an hour and a half late. The ceremony was slated to start at 6:30PM, but I did not want to start the ceremony until the bus arrived since over 50 guests were on that bus.

The late bus forced us to do some last-minute shuffling:

So what were we doing during that extra hour before the start of the ceremony?

Luckily, the guests kept themselves occupied. They had some entertainment since the string quartet started on time at 6:00PM. In addition, The Fountainhead provided some light snacks and refreshments - at no extra charge! (I rub them! Honestly, I do!)

How about the bridal party?

The Fountainhead has two suites on either side of its chapel: a large, elegant one for the bride and her bridesmaids, and a smaller one for the groom and his groomsmen. As a result, neither Mr. Peony nor I had any idea what was going on each others’ suites… perhaps for the better.

I was having a mini panic attack in the girls’ suite. My dress felt tighter and I suddenly had trouble breathing. Our DOC Christine Viola and my bridesmaids were having heck of the time calming me down.

Meanwhile, the boys were keeping calm in a different manner. Remember that bottle of whiskey they didn’t finish? Well, it turns out that they were taking shots in their suite! They even offered our pastor a shot! (Luckily he has a sense of humor and laughed them off.)

So I end this post with that image: me blowing into a brown paper bag, the boys taking whiskey shots, and over 50 of our guests stuck in traffic limbo…

Did anything happen at your wedding to throw off your carefully planned timeline? How did you adapt?