Weddingbee

Whenever I hear brides talk about their wedding day, the word “perfect” always seems to pop up. My wedding day was not perfect. Things did not go smoothly. For starters, I woke up that morning so anxious for everything to be “perfect” that I was sick. Really sick. So sick, in fact, that for a while I did not think that I was going to be able to make it down the aisle. The feeling horrible put me ever so slightly behind and I rushed through the morning trying to catch up. The church was locked when we arrived, the flowers were late, my grandmother’s corsage was missing, as were all of the mizuhiki knots I’d handmade for the ushers and readers. The bridesmaids walked down the aisle to the wrong music and some random guy in running shorts practically walked on my train as he followed me and Papa Belle into the church for our grand entrance.

When those doors opened, though, and I saw Mr. Donut standing at the altar, everything just… got better. I wasn’t nervous. I didn’t feel bad. I wasn’t even tired. In fact, I felt perfectly ready to be standing there making those vows. Nothing else mattered. All of those little things that I’d worked so hard on, that had occupied so much of my time - they were nice and all, but they were just details. The important thing was that I was marrying - finally and again - my best friend and, without a doubt, the love of my life. So, so what if it wasn’t perfect? It was still the most amazing and beautiful day of my life. So far, that is.
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Sorry to have been MIA for so long, but Murphy’s Law was the new rule around here in the days leading up to the wedding. It all started three weeks ago when I received a phone call from the stylist I had booked to do my hair…

“Miss Donut,” she said, “I see here that you have an appointment for a hair trial this Saturday for your wedding in two weeks. Well, we got to talking about it and we just realized that we’ll all be on vacation that weekend and that the salon will be closed.”

Excuse me? What?! You JUST realized that you won’t be open that weekend, despite the fact that I booked this appointment over a month ago? After a five minute freak out, I called and booked a salon that was recommended to me by the original but now closed salon. The downside was she could only fit me in for a hair trial 2 days before the wedding.
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I’ve been having nightmares. They go something like this: Mr. Donut and I are standing blissfully at the altar, smiling and gazing adoringly at each other surrounded by our family and friends who have traveled from far and wide to be with us on our special day. The sun is shining. The wee birdies are singing. It’s perfect…until we reach a moment in the service where I’ve forgotten to choose a reading and/or a person to read said reading. In the dream there is a terrible moment of silence and I turn very red for forgetting a part of the most important part of the day. I’ve had this dream three times. The third time I figured someone was trying to tell me something. So a couple of weeks ago I set to work on our program.

We wanted our ceremony to have a cohesive theme. We chose peace and unity and our search for readings that reflect that began. Once again I went into research mode and Mr. Donut endured weeks of e-mailed suggestions while I endured weeks of waiting for his responses and notes. (For the record, I do not recommend making a long distance move away from your sweetie a mere weeks before your nuptials. It more than kinda sucks.)

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It’s just over two weeks to the wedding and my girls still don’t have shoes! We all live in different towns, which has made a trip to the mall for some serious girl time and shoe shopping impossible. I’ve told them both to wear whatever they like so long as it’s roughly in the same color family, but I’m starting getting the impression that they would rather I pick it out myself or, at the very least, get my OK. So, after a few hours on the internet doing some serious searching, I present you with the options.

Shoe number one is a sassy little number by Charles David. “Spice” is a champagne satin shoe with a cute little bow at the vamp.

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They’re so lucky. We girls spend hours upon hours in the search for our wedding gown. We wrestle with the seemingly endless choices of cut and fabric and length and shade of white and on and on and on. And then once we find The Perfect Dress, we have to fork over an obscene amount of money for a garment we will wear once. For about 6 hours. Yup. Boys are way lucky. Rented, off the rack, or bespoke, a good suit is a thing of beauty that will last for, well, a while. It can be worn again and again on any number of occasions.

Now, Mongolia was hard on good suits. I mean really hard. All that dirt and ice and coal dust just reduced all Mr. Donut’s suits to mere threadbare shadows of their former selves that no amount of dry cleaning was going to cure. He needed serious wardrobe reconstruction, stat! One of the advantages of living in Singapore was that there were a plethora of good tailors, so getting a really nice handmade suit at a great price was pretty easy. Jack Custom Tailors in Far East Plaza came highly recommended, and so way back in September we stopped by and ordered what was to be the first of many bespoke suits for Mr. Donut. He’s absolutely besotted with them.
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I keep things. Little mementos like fall leaves collected from walks in far away lands and simple one word cards. I keep programs from plays I’ve attended and tickets from movies I’ve seen. I keep safe the letters from my high school sweetheart, my soon to be new husband, and the notes, cards and words of wisdom written to me by my parents while I was away at college. And I’ve also managed to keep, somehow, two letters from Granddaddy.

Granddaddy was not a man of many words. His letters, one written on the occasion of my 15th birthday and the other upon my high school graduation, are short and sweet and, though they are simple, they capture in a few words all of his humor and remind me of his love. I find myself laughing with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I read them now.
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Yesterday I took my cranes to the post office and shipped them to Mama and Papa Donut.

All 685 of them piled on the bed for The Counting.
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Thanks to all of you out there who offered so many great suggestions and helpful hints about how to do my calligraphy. I went out and bought all kinds of pens and markers and other tools of scribal warfare. I hunted them down, got them home, and set to work practicing to get a sense of what kind of writing I could do with them. The answer: too big. I was looking for an instrument that could do detailed, frilly work. I had a vision in mind, you see, something grand and girly and graceful. Something like this…

{from A Lucky Orchid Wedding}

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YEAH! After two weeks of designs and countless mock ups, assembly, calligraphy and, finally, mailing, I am happy to report that my invitations are one by one finding their way to our guests from all the way here in Singapore. If you recall, this was the wedding invitation ensemble inspiration.

{Martha Stewart Crafts, Vera Wang Invitation, program from TheSteph03, paper from Paper Studio}

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If you love Laura Hooper Calligraphy like I do, then you will love to know that she now has her own blog! A Lucky Orchid Wedding is full of her gorgeous work and much more!

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