Weddingbee Blog

After a sunny afternoon on the beach for our welcome brunch, we freshened up for the rehearsal.

Queue the bridal fit-o-rage.

I rode with Mr. Sew’s family to our venue, fully expecting my family to be “right behind”. Right behind turned into late. Really late.

Under the disapproving eyes of my future in-laws, who I could only assume were making negative judgments about the type of unreliable family their son was about to marry into, I frantically called my family. The reason they were late was because they couldn’t find my brother. Apparently he and my cousins decided to hop to another beach after the brunch, and they left watches and cell phones on dry land while they forgot-what-time-it-was in the water.

The venue attendant, tired of waiting for “the rest of our party,” went to go wash his car in the lot.

Yet eventually they all showed up.

Instead of relief that my brother arrived, I was angry. I fumed a bit at all of them for a while. So now not only did the in-laws think we were unreliable, we were also fire-breathing dragons of pure wrath. Poor Mr. Sew.

In the end, I guess I was just one of those brides with a pretty quick turnaround in the mood department. In retrospect, I’m glad everyone enjoyed the trip so much, even if it meant being late for our rehearsal. Above all, I wanted everyone to have fun! Having a Hawaii destination wedding is much more than a celebration of marriage—it’s a full-blown vacation for everyone involved. Beaches are a natural part of that experience. I just hadn’t understood the concept of “island time”!

Anyway, after I vented and everyone went around apologizing, we began, and everyone was happy again as usual.

Except my dad, who “had a moment” on our first pretend-trip down the aisle.

An auntie hands drama-dad a tissue.

I think he was hamming it up, but I guess we’ll never really know the truth.

My aunt had made me an impromptu veil for the occasion, and my mother let me borrow the silk bouquet of lavender flowers she had used in her own wedding, twenty-five years prior.

Sewing-Sis was nonplussed at the honor of holding my shower-plate-bouquet.

It took us approximately three tries to get things “right.” Mr. Sew had made three different versions of our processional song, depending on how long it would take us to “get down the aisle.” The hard part was trying to figure out how much time to allot Mr. Sew’s grandmothers to walk down. My cousins stood in as “grandmothers,” teetering at a slow pace to simulate the time we’d need.

We had to remember the Bible verses we picked, since I forgot the program at the hotel.

Our videographer friends got some day-before practice.

And as you can imagine, things got more and more hammier as time went on. As the pastor said, “you may be seated,” our brothers and sister decided they’d be seated too. I don’t think it works that way.

Then our pastor wigged out a bit upon realizing our wedding bands were nearly identical in size and shape. Though it probably wouldn’t have mattered much if we had swapped rings.

Some got a little spacier as the time went on too. When was dinner again?

“Bouquet, sister! Bouquet!”

Of course, we couldn’t practice everything then and there. Mr. Sew replaced our final kiss with a salute to his future wife!

And of course we were given our first blank stares of incredulousness as everyone heard our recessional music for the first time. Although some of you can probably guess—we did end up using my much-desired Star Wars Throne Room song.

It seemed Mr. Sew would not only be marrying into an unreliable, fire-breathing family, but a hammy, nerdy one as well.

Our wedding week in review:

• We took care of some last minute DIY details, and officialized everything.
• We vacationed with our out-of-towners, and threw a yummy welcome beach brunch.