Weddingbee Blog

Finally it was the morning of our wedding! The day dawned bright and clear—amazingly beautiful weather for a Northwest wedding in February.

Since we had a welcome dinner the night before and no real time to rehearse, we planned our rehearsal for Saturday morning, after which my girls and I would start getting ready. Clearly that meant that Mr. EB and I would be seeing each other in the morning before the wedding. Luckily neither of us had been set on not seeing each other until I came down the aisle. But we also decided to stay together the night before the wedding—which honestly, was more my choice than Mr. EB’s.

I think if Mr. EB had it entirely his way we probably would have stayed apart the night before (even though we would still have seen each other the next morning). But I know myself. I am not a good sleeper under the best of circumstances, and between my nerves and everything else flying through my head (plus being in a strange place), it certainly made for not the best of circumstances! I sleep MUCH better when I know that Mr. EB is close, and I wanted that feeling the night before our wedding. I am a lucky girl in that Mr. EB totally gave in on this one and let me have what I needed. He also told me later that he was really happy how it worked out.

Now, I have to point out that overall, the week leading up to the wedding had been really calm. Sure there were minor issues here and there, but everything had just gone so smoothly! And other than a couple people missing a ferry the night before and being slightly later to dinner, no major hiccups had happened during the Welcome Dinner either. And it wasn’t even raining! So you see where I’m going, right? Clearly, something had to happen that would disrupt things (at least slightly). And that disruption came in the form of a very large tree, falling and blocking the main road to IslandWood (the way that I had given anyone who asked for directions, including our hair and makeup team and all of our guests who weren’t staying at IslandWood). Oh, and did I mention that it also knocked out power to IslandWood? Oh yeah, it totally did.

It happened when I was in our cabin taking a shower after breakfast and before our rehearsal. All of a sudden everything went dark and truly my first thought was, how in the hell did I manage to trip a circuit breaker when I’m in the shower?? Luckily the generator came on almost immediately. I actually thought it was the main power back on and that there had just been a little blip in the power (not at all unheard of on the island).

So when I showed up for our rehearsal, I was a little surprised that our officiant was just walking in as well (I was a couple minutes late and she had made a point to mention that she was always early, to make sure that she could deal with any potential surprises). It turned out that when the power went out and the generator came on it caused the main gate to shut and lock her out for a short period of time! Fortunately, just before she was about to leave her car, climb the gate and hike up the driveway to get to our rehearsal the gate opened back up. But yes, I was now slightly nervous for what might happen later.

And then we got a phone call from the hair and makeup team (good friends of Bridesmaid K and Co-MOH S), asking how to get to IslandWood given that there was a giant tree in the way. Thankfully S and K took charge immediately and got them alternate directions, and I didn’t even know about that problem until after they showed up and started making us pretty!

So with the lights on (for the time being), and all members of the wedding party present, it was finally time to rehearse…

*Unless otherwise noted, all photos by the fabulously talented Persimmon Images.

Want to catch up?

• We get our license to wed.
• We bottle and seal our wedding wine.
• We finish our projects one week out.
• The bridesmaids lunch.
• I make gifts for my girls.
• I break down the morning before.
• The family gathered.
• We come together at the Welcome Dinner.
• We eat s’mores and tell stories around the bonfire.