Weddingbee Blog

On Saturday, I woke up around 7 in the morning. Even though on the weekends I regularly enjoy sleeping until noon, there was no sleeping in today. IT WAS OUR WEDDING DAY! Luckily, my sore throat from the night before was completely gone, much to my relief upon waking.

Mr. Cola thought differently about waking early, and probably didn’t appreciate me curling my bangs and eyelashes, and bouncing around the suite, getting things ready for the day. To give him a little more quiet sleep time, I got dressed in my “getting ready outfit”: a white short-sleeve sweatshirt with my initial on it, a purple tank top, and a white skirt, and headed downstairs to the on-site Starbucks.

Down at Starbucks, I ran into one of my bridesmaids, and we stocked up on caffeine for the day. I knew I couldn’t get through a long day without my usual quad shot iced latte, and I picked up a Double Shot can too, just in case I needed it later!

By the time I got back up to our room, Mr. Cola was finally awake and in the shower, so I could open up the drapes and lay out my jewelry, garters, shoes and rings. I wanted to have everything ready to go for when our photographers arrived, so they could easily shoot my accessories, and also in case we ended up running late; I didn’t want to have to find things at the last minute and potentially forget something.

Then I just had to wait until Mr. C left to go hang out with the groomsmen before I could get out my dress, and hang it on the large mirror that was bolted to the wall in our suite. And since two of our three hair and makeup artists were running about 20 minutes late, a bridesmaid and I had time to snap a few pics of my accessories ourselves.

(waiting for everyone to arrive, sans makeup)

Around 10:20 the rest of the hair and makeup team finally arrived, with so much stuff they needed a luggage cart to get everything to our suite!

(Tons of after party drinks in the corners of the room!)

And then it was time to get pretty! The stylist who’d arrived on time had already started on my sister’s hair, since she would need to run up to my parents’ house later to pick up her dress and my toss bouquet, which I’d planned to use for our first look, to save my real bouquet for the ceremony.

My three bridesmaids traded off between the two secondary stylists, with one doing everyone’s hair, and the other doing everyone’s makeup. And other than requesting that my sister wear her hair up, I let everyone decide on how they wanted their hair and makeup to look. My bridesmaids feeling comfortable and beautiful was more important to me than having them conform to any particular look or style!

And I had to snap a couple shots from the second story of our suite!

While my bridesmaids were switching off between the secondary stylists, I had my miracle worker stylist all to myself. You may remember Aimee Lam from Mrs. Pug’s wedding, and she is seriously worth her weight in gold! She remembered everything from my trial back in November: smoky eyes, double layered eyelashes, and the fact that since I wear contacts, I have trouble with others putting eyeliner on my lower lids, so she let me do it myself.

Once my makeup was done, it was time to tame my hair. In case you haven’t noticed, I have a LOT of it, and it’s pretty long and very thick. So, industrial strength hair spray, a super powered curling iron and pin curls were necessary to get my curls to mostly hold until the wee hours of the morning.

(Mobile blogging again!)

It was so nice to have a relaxing morning of getting fawned over, especially after the stress and near heart attacks of the previous week. I’m happy to report that I was able to “get in the zone” and there was nothing that could stress me out or bother me on the morning of our wedding. What would happen would happen, and there wasn’t much I could do or worry about, so I just didn’t. I just listened to the relaxing playlist of Ingrid Michaelson and Joss Stone I’d put on, chatted with my bridesmaids and the stylists, and soaked up the morning.

Around this time our DOC called to check in to make sure I was eating, and reminded me to take an allergy pill (thankfully, because I probably would have forgotten and it was much needed for our day outside). She also took the opportunity to confirm our hotel room numbers, so she could let our photogs know so they wouldn’t have to bug me to find out themselves. Yet another reason why having a DOC is a must: on your big day there are so many other things to think about than the little details, so having someone on top of their game is extremely valuable, even before the wedding starts!

While I was getting my hair curled, my bridesmaids were finishing up their hair and makeup. One of them ordered us some yummy sandwiches from room service, and made sure I actually ate some of it, since coffee alone wasn’t going to get me through until dinner. Another bridesmaid called the bell desk to request a van cab for 2:30 for most of the wedding party to get to the venue, and my sister went up to my parents’ house to get her last minute altered dress (but sadly my toss bouquet was forgotten, so I didn’t have a bouquet for our first look pictures).

Time was drawing near for our photographers to arrive, and my bridesmaids were mostly dressed and ready to go, but my hair was still a work in progress. Since we’d been 20 minutes behind all day, I wasn’t all ready to go except for putting on my dress as I’d planned when our photogs arrived at 1:30. Unfortunately this meant we didn’t get any fun bridesmaid pictures around the hotel like I’d wanted, but it was worth it to have my hair all securely pinned in place and perfect.

So instead of getting into my dress right when our photogs arrived, we broke out the bottle of champagne I’d bought a year ago on a trip to Sonoma, and had been saving for this very moment. Doesn’t the bottle look perfect for a wedding?

Next up, what the guys did the morning of our wedding, and I finally get to put on my wedding gown!

If you end up running late getting ready for your wedding, will it stress you out, or will you be able to just go with the flow?

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 DIYing flower arrangements
• I kicked off our official recaps with my #1 wedding tip
• We began the weekend festivities with a sunset cruise for our wedding party
• We rehearsed our quick and easy ceremony
• I panicked, but we got our rehearsal dinner decorations set up just in time
• Our families met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner under the trees
• What went wrong on our wedding day, and my tips for future brides

(All pictures in this post are personal photos, taken by myself or my bridesmaids)