Weddingbee Blog

And away we go! Let the Swan wedding recaps begin!

The night before the wedding I couldn’t sleep. I’m not talking about some tossing and turning here; I mean I really couldn’t sleep a wink. After a pretty quick and efficient rehearsal, a nice family-only dinner and drinks with many of our guests that night, I thought I would be totally zonked out. I was initially, but about 1AM my mind was racing and I couldn’t go back to sleep. Yikes!!!

I knew that I wanted some personal alone time before my very early beauty appointments starting at 7AM (one of the downsides to having a daytime wedding, I guess). I really wanted some time to wrap my mind around what was about to happen and to make sure that I had some time for some prayer/meditation with my friend, Big Mitts (not her real name) who was staying with me that night in my hotel room. Big Mitts and I do a lot of prayer and reflection together, and I really liked the idea of being able to do that with her before all of the craziness of the day started. The problem was that I woke up four hours before I wanted to do that!

After lying in bed for what seemed like forever, I tried my best not to wake up Big Mitts, and I snuck down to the hotel lobby. I tried to journal but apparently the hotel thinks it’s cool to blast music in the lobby at 5AM!! A completely vacant hotel lobby was not the quiet, relaxing retreat that I thought it would be. After being way too annoyed by the music, I rushed back upstairs and tried to not wake up Big Mitts, which didn’t work.

Big Mitts and I ended up talking a lot, I cried quite a bit (A GOOD cry, not a sad cry, more like a releasing cry) and we had some nice peaceful moments together.

I liked having this quiet time together with one of my closest friends early in the morning, especially since I was going to have 50 million people up in my grill for the rest of the day. Having this time to reflect and be at peace early really set the tone for what I wanted my wedding day to be.

Besides, I knew soon that I was going to be putting this on:

(Dante Williams Photography)

Throughout the course of my recaps, I’ll try to leave you with some tips that I thought were helpful to me during my wedding day. Here’s the first:

Swan Tip #1: If you can steal a few moments for yourself (or with others who have a calming effect on you) to have some quiet time to read, reflect, do some yoga, deep breathing, or whatever relaxes you, definitely do it!

Are you planning on employing Swan Tip #1 on your wedding day?