Weddingbee Blog

The day before our wedding was a busy day. Cinnamum and I started off the day bright and early by getting into my car and driving to Cinnamon Buns’s parents’ house. This was where we were going to bake the wedding pies. We could have stayed at our house, but their kitchen has a much bigger oven; plus, we’d stored the frozen pies in their spare freezer.

To keep us occupied while the pies were in the oven (two batches at about one and a half hours each), I had kept back a DIY project—framing the photos for our family wedding-photo display. We’d loaded up the car with all the frames, photos, and scrapbook paper, so we were all set to mat all the photos and put them in our collection of frames. We also took the time to lay them out and match up the name cards I’d made for each one, to make sure we hadn’t missed anyone. We had! Somehow I had never printed the photo of Cinnamon Buns’s dad marrying his step-mum! We prepped a frame for them, and I made a call to Cinnamon Buns (back at our house, tidying/loading up the groomsmen’s cars) to put that picture on a CD and bring it to the venue.

I also did a couple other errands while pies were in the oven, just little things like, you know, picking up all the guys’ shirts and Cinnamon Buns’s suit from the drycleaner!

Photo by Cinnamum

Once we’d put the pies in (labeled) boxes, which we left open, as hot pies will steam themselves into sogginess if left in closed boxes, Cinnamum and I headed down to the venue. Cinnamon Buns’s parents were going to bring the pies after they’d cooled, as they had their own set of errands to run that morning.

By the time Cinnamum and I got there (around 1:00 PM or 2:00 PM, I think?), the caterers were already there doing their setup—they were providing us with all the small round tables for our guests to sit at, plus the white linens for all the tables we were going to use. Cinnamon Buns and his guys had done a great job with the setup so far, and when I arrived they headed off to go pick up some more things we needed (beer chiller thing for our mini-kegs, and some lighting gear from work).

Once we had dragged our boxes in from the car, we started unpacking them and figuring out just how we were going to set up all this stuff. We’d drawn up plans before, but things are always slightly different when you get into the space so I think one big wedding tip would be to be flexible with your plans. There might not be an outlet where you need an outlet, or tables might be longer or shorter than you thought. Rest assured that it will all work out.

Photo by Groomsman L

We were all very glamorous all day long, in our sweaty, scruffy clothes.

These are times when people are going to look to you to delegate—use them! It was great to have tasks like “put a paper table topper on every table” for all our helping hands to do, while I mainly focused on setting up the photo display. I delegated the task of going to the London Drugs around the corner to print our couple missing photos, too! Also, while I knew I wanted pies on cute stands and stacks of books, I wasn’t bothered about how exactly it was set up—that was a great task for Cinnamum: “Make the pie table pretty with these stands and these books. Go.”

Look at all those family wedding photos! I had no idea we’d get so many—the whole idea was a bit of an afterthought, but it was the hit of the wedding!

My parents were hanging bunting, Cinnamon Buns’s step-dad was putting out business cards I’d printed on our home printer telling people where to to post the photos they took. (We used KnotPic, which I’ll write about n another post.) The odd family member popped in to say hi… it was a good day. At some points I felt a little stressed, but it was fun to be hanging out and working with some of our favourite friends and family. It was great to see them working to make our day the next day wonderful, coming up with solutions for problems I hadn’t even thought of… I felt very loved that day, if a little rushed.

Did you set up your decor, or was that someone else’s job?