Weddingbee Blog

Hive, I don’t even know how to tell you about all the ridiculousness that happened the day before our wedding.

Friday morning was calm enough—I filled the cupcakes while Mr. Wiz packed the car. Excitement buzzed in the air as box after box of our months of hard work and planning made its way to be packed for its destined journey.

Batch one of many

All the cupcakes, and our top-tier cake, ready to go

Seeing my wedding dress hanging there on the basement door, ready to go, was so exciting!

At some point, it became clear that not everything was going to fit in our car. Mr. Wiz tried re-packing things every which way, but the fact of the matter was that seven cases of beer, umpteen boxes of decorations, a wedding gown and groom’s suit, two suitcases, over 100 cupcakes, and two people just do not fit in a Honda Civic. We had to call MOH Lefty and Mr. Wiz’s mom in for backup, and after we had packed all three cars to the brim, everyone was behind schedule. By the time we hit the road we were over an hour late. Panic Level: 3.

I had to ride in the backseat to hold up the cupcake stack, and our program basket rode on my lap.

My dad was already at the venue with our rented tableware when we got there. We spent the morning ironing linens and setting the tables, making sure everything was just so. I was grinning at every turn as more and more pieces of my vision came to life! At some point, Wizard Aunt and Cousins T and C arrived and immediately got busy in the kitchen with decorating our cupcakes and our little “top tier” bride & groom cake.

But while some things were coming together, other things were falling apart at the seams. The coordinator we had been working with throughout our year of planning, M, was not there, and would not be there for our wedding. Hive, you can sympathize with me: to have the one person who knows the ins and outs of your planning suddenly not be there for the actual wedding is more than a little unnerving, and the guy we got instead, S, was not even a wedding coordinator. Panic Level: 6.5. He seemed to have no idea of all the details we had gone over with M, and was rude about everything, to boot.

The problems actually started a week before the wedding, when we suddenly found out that our venue didn’t provide water glasses. In our contract it stated that they provided “all glassware,” which one would assume would include water glasses, right? Apparently it only meant wine glasses. And they never thought to specify that. What the heck?? Good thing I asked, and good thing Mr. Wiz’s cousin owns a party rental company, who saved us at the last minute by supplying our water glasses.

On Friday, in their unending quest to deny our guests water, we found out from S that they didn’t provide ice for drinks either, nor did they provide pitchers for water on the guest tables. M had assured us they provided both, so we had bought neither, and had no way of getting them now (our venue is kinda in the middle of nowhere). S also was shocked that we brought bottled beer instead of a keg because, he said, they had no way of chilling or serving bottles — contrary to what M had told us. On top of this, our appetizer table was nowhere to be seen, and S said that no one had told him we needed another eight-foot table, and that he didn’t think he had any extras.

We showed him our papers from our final planning meeting with M, which had all of these things outlined, but he kept saying, “M never told you that, because we don’t do that.” Right, because we’re lying about this and I forged her signature? I was beside myself. It was one of those times where someone is being so idiotic and frustrating and you’re so angry that you can’t even think of words. I had to step away and let someone else deal with S, lest I take his head off.

We had no way of contacting M that weekend to get her to set S straight, so even though we knew S was wrong, we had no way of proving it. So we were faced with the prospect of our guests potentially having no water, no ice, room temperature beer (if any at all), and no appetizers—in other words, being forced to be completely inhospitable to our guests—and there was literally nothing we could do about it but wait and see if these things were there at the wedding.

If it had been problems with our decorations or linens or something, fine. I’d have been upset, but no one would have noticed or minded if our linens were a different color or something. But I’m positive our guests would have known, and minded very much, if they had no food during cocktail hour and nothing to drink all night but wine. Panic Level: 9.

Combine all that with the fact that I was running on very little sleep and had to field never-ending questions from nine clueless family members on where to put what, what the centerpieces should look like, if I wanted XYZ to go on the ABC or the 123, and I was run a little ragged. I think this oh-so-flattering picture that MOH Lefty snapped of me sums up how I was feeling by then, red eyes and all:

I call this, “UUUUUUUUGGGHHHHHHHHHH”

Miss something? Follow along here!

First, I kick things off with our wedding video.
I go stir-crazy, and almost choke to death, the week before our wedding.