We did it!

discussion title:	We did it! We really did it!

message #:	3874.1
from:	cl-grimmy35
date:	6/14/2004 10:13 am
replies:	12

God, it's been forever since I've been here. Where do I start? Settle in - this will be very long.

Saturday night Jamie comes by to say goodnight before he goes over to his parents place, where he spent the night. I pulled him in the bathroom and just broke down crying. I said, "I don't know if I can do this. I really don't." We talked it out, I took a shower and went to bed. Two of my bridesmaids were there, which was terrific, but I was feeling so down and was even more upset that the day before my wedding I wasn't happy! I couldn't figure it out. It still didn't seem real. It actually didn't hit until the next day when I was driving my car doing 80 on the beltway with my hair all done up and my veil on. I was getting married! That's when I finally got happy! My MOH woke up at 3:00 Sunday morning and I woke up at 4. We stayed up talking until 5, when we got up. Tried desperately to fit everyone and everything in my car. Got half way around the block and had to go back to get the petticoat! LOL. Left it sitting right there on the floor. I was sick to my stomach worried that we weren't going to be able to get our hair done. Jamie had went to the hair cuttery the night before to get his hair cut and they were closed for "mechanical repairs". I was so upset. I got a call from my BM in the morning. I thought for sure she was going to tell me that they were closed. Thankfully they were open. She was just wondering where I was - running late of course. Got there and two of them were getting their hair done. Sitting around when I realized that I had forgotten the lipstick that my MOH and I had picked out the day before. It is extremely difficult for me to find a color that looks good on me, so I couldn't just use something else. Drove all the way back to get it. Two of my BM's gave me a hard time before the wedding about having to be at the hair place at 6:00. As it turns out, we ran way over and didn't make it to the site until 9:45. Called Jamie to make sure he wasn't anywhere he could see me. Him and his GM were inside inflating the balloons. I turned to my BM's and said, "He's here! He really showed up!" LOL. I was still worried he might get cold feet and run away!

Getting ready was a blast. We had our pictures taken (me with the girls basically) beforehand. I looked at my watch later and saw it was 11:05. I was not happy about that. I like everything to start when they say it's going to start. Apparently someone working for Martin's was waiting outside the bridal suite room and heard me complaining and they said, "The bride is more than ready to go." What do you know, the ceremony started almost immediately after that. LOL. I had told the DJ that I wanted to walk down the aisle to "Valentine" along with my bridesmaids. I'm not sure if he forgot to tell the DJ he sent, or if it was just overlooked, but right before I was about to walk down, they cut off the song and started playing the very boring "Here Comes the Bride". I freaked. Well, okay, I didn't freak, but I made sure very fast that they knew I did not want to walk down the aisle to that and they told the DJ and "Valentine" came back on. You can see on the tape just how worried all of the guests were. "Here Comes the Bride" was playing, I did not walk out and then it cut off. Like they were all worried that I had changed my mind. Hee-hee.

Jamie told me later that he could see me jumping up and down outside in the hall before it was my turn to walk down. I was so excited. I couldn't help it! And why was everyone moving so slowly? Walk!! LOL. My turn came and I walked down with my mother. It felt like an eternity. I was taking my time, I thought, walking down the aisle, jumping up and down. I couldn't stop. When I later saw the tape on the Ceremony, I realized just how fast I was walking. I was flying down the aisle. I got to the middle and that was the first time I could actually see Jamie. I nearly started hyperventilating. I dropped my head because I knew I was going to start crying and I was trying not to. It didn't help. By the time I got to him, I was breathing very heavy and I was bawling. I was so stunned to be standing there next to him that I was barely listening to what the Reverend was saying... everything that I had taken so long to pick out had been picked out by me for a reason and now I couldn't even listen to it. I was in my own little world with Jamie.

The vows came and I could barely muster up the courage to say what I had written in front of the 100 people staring at me. When I did finally start, all I did was cry. I'm surprised I made it through. I had to stop half way through to regain my composure. I never expected Jamie to cry, but in all honestly, I thought he'd cry more than I would. I never thought I would cry. Turns out, I couldn't make it down the aisle before I started crying, and I could hardly make it through my vows.

Jamie was so proud of himself for finishing his vows first, so I'll admit that I was a little worried about what his vows could consist of with only 20 minutes of thought put into them, but his vows made me cry even more and he cried too (woo-hoo - at least I wasn't the only one stumbling through my vows).

During the kiss, I was so ecstatic to be married to this amazing man, that I just kept hanging on and hugging him. Our Reverend had to break us up so that she could announce us as newly married and we could move on. LOL. I saw many camera flashes from our photographer during our kiss. It was very long.

On the way out, even though I had continued my jumping up and down during the actual ceremony, I still wasn't all jumped out. I tried to get Jamie to skip down the aisle. He wouldn't, so I skipped along until he made me stop. :)

Off we went to get our pictures taken, and instead we just stood outside hugging. We really did it!! The ceremony was just perfect. I even had people were telling me that they've never seen a happier bride at any wedding that they've been to. Apparently Jamie's family couldn't believe that it was really me because I'm "too quiet". Hee-hee. Even when I made my rounds this morning at work, word had made it around to people who had not been invited that I was the happiest bride they'd ever seen. All I did was jump up and down. :)

Pictures took an eternity, so I told our photographer that was enough and away we went.

I had bought a very good DVD to show us how to do the Waltz for our first dance. We practiced, but not enough. The night before, during my break down, I was so upset that we never learned how to do it. Jamie practiced with me right then. It would be okay. But during our first dance, we just kind of stumbled around laughing trying to remember how to do it right. Even the guests were laughing as we tried and finally just gave up and did a regular "hugging" dance. We tried again for our final dance, but still couldn't do it. At least it was interesting.

I was actually a little disappointed in the way the Reception went. First of all, we had close to 100 people there and the only ones who were dancing were me and my Bridesmaids. What was everyone else doing? And why weren't they dancing? It really upset me and made me think that no one was having fun. I got Jamie out there as much as I could, which was nice, but even his friends didn't move from their seats. It was quite disappointing. Especially after I had taken so much time to personally select the songs that were played, in an effort to make sure everyone had fun and that there was a large variety of songs played.

There were lots of downs here though, unfortunately. First of all, the DJ did not stick to the list. When I went up and told him about it, he tried to tell me that the song that he was currently playing was on the list, which it was not. He spent about a minute and a half flipping through the pages trying to find it, and of course he could not. He said he would stick to the play list. We walked away and immediately after, he played another song that wasn't on the list. All through the reception, he kept repeating songs! Not just one or two, but many. I gave him a five page list of songs, trust me, there were plenty of songs to be played, no need to repeat! I wasn't the only one to notice this either. It was rather embarassing.

We were doing the anniversary dance where all married couples would dance and the DJ was supposed to ask everyone who has been married less than a year to sit down, less than two years, five years, ten, etc. He got to 30 and there were still like four couples dancing. He went to 40 and everyone sat down. He called the couples that had been married at least 30 years back out on the floor, so I thought for sure that he was going to go from there and say 31, 32, etc. I mean, that's only common sense, I think. But no! He said, "You're all winners." and started playing new music. I was livid! This was a very big deal to me. I didn't know who had been married the longest, but I was very curious to find out. I stomped over to him and said, "There was a reason for that dance! The person who has been married the longest was supposed to get the prize!" (the prize was right in front of him too. He knew all this). He said, "I know. I don't know what to tell you." I said, "Well common sense would say that after you pulled everyone who had been married at least thirty years back out on the dance floor, you count up from there to see who the winner is." He gives me a damn attitude and says, "I don't know what to tell you. I'll keep the gift!" I was absolutely fuming. I grabbed the gift out of his hands, stomped away, told Jamie I was pissed, and then went behind a curtain where I broke down in tears.

The manager of Martin's came up to me, along with our hostess and asked me what they could do to make it better. Thankfully he saved the day as he redid the anniversary dance and made all the announcements and let the winning couple (who had been married 35 years by the way - and they were parents of one of my BM's, whom I am very close to. A great moment) give their advice to us, as they were supposed to. Guess the DJ never planned on doing that. Of course since everyone had already done this the first time, I will say that there were some married couples who did not get back up the second time. :(

All DJ's usually ask what songs you want played for the garter and bouquet toss. The head of the DJ service we used also asked us this, but I suppose the DJ we got chose to ignore it because he did not play them. Not that it really matters to me, just something else I noticed. Why ask if you have no intention of doing it?

We had way fun guest pages set out that we really wanted everyone to fill out and return to us. Unfortunately, when we got home, I found a tremendous of them that were blank. This also was a huge disappointment. This was something that we had put a lot of thought into, and something that was very important to both of us. It's upsetting to not get a page from everyone.

The good thing is that I have heard from so many girls on here that no one cares about favors and always leaves them on the tables. I will say that we had guests leaving with more than just their bag of favors. They were taking extras from the people who hadn't shown up. LOL. That at least really made me happy.

We had games there to be played. I did not want our wedding to be the boring reception filled only with dancing, so I literally spent what seemed like forever online trying to find games that people would want to play that would make the reception more exciting and would break up the monotony. Not as many people as I expected played them though, but at least they got some people who never even danced, up out of their seats once or twice. At any rate, I thought they were fun and I had a good time. Jamie did too, I know.

I have been to so many weddings that are the traditional four hour reception and they fly by. I did not want my magical wedding day to be the same way, so Jamie and I paid for a 5 1/2 hour reception. Very very disappointing when everyone started leaving early (even his mom stood up at about 2:30 and said, "We're leaving!!"). I actually made the decision to cut the reception short because I wanted to do a balloon release (gasp I know. Some of you here will hate to hear that) when we left (and Jamie and his groomsmen had gone to all the trouble of blowing them up), and I was afraid that when 5:00 rolled around, no one would be around to do it with. So we ended the reception at around 4:00 and the wonderful guests that we had who had stayed that long, made up for the missing guests by grabbing large amounts of balloons. I actually felt stupid when I walked outside with one balloon and everyone else was walking out with like twenty! LOL. But it made for an awesome photo and I loved it. Of course the manager of Martin's had made the annoucement that I wanted to do a balloon release and asked everyone to grab some balloons and step outside. We waited and waited and even though everyone wasn't out there, we assumed everyone that was going to come out had, so we went on with the balloon release. About four minutes after the balloons had been let go, here comes a whole group of people with more balloons who had for some reason chose to come out when they wanted to, and not care about when we wanted to do it, so we actually ended up with two balloon releases.

By the end of the day, I was tired of seeing people leave early, I was furious with our DJ, and I just wanted to leave!! Jamie and I said our goodbyes, drove around the block and then came back to help clean up. Yes, I had a good time, but I will say that there were some things that didn't go as I had hoped and had left me disappointed. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't. The ceremony was absolutely perfect except for the music mishap. But as for the reception, I think we would've done something a lot more low key, with a lot less people: around 40 or so. At the end of the day, while looking back, it just wasn't worth it. I did get some great compliments though from guests who said that our wedding was very unique and "happy" and that they could tell just by looking around at everything how much thought we had put into planning it all. They noticed all the little touches that we did that everyone told us wouldn't matter because no one would notice. They did.

We went to the hotel room that night which is when I finally took off my dress (which, by the way received as many compliments about being beautiful as I did about being the happiest bride). There was an anniversary going on next door and I had people from there pulling me aside to tell me that they loved my dress and it was so pretty.

The next day we woke up and I was excited to start our honeymoon. I got out of bed rather early, laid back down and I went to get up about 15 minutes later. Jamie was still sleeping. I picked up my head and heard this awful "ripping" sound in my neck. I screamed out in pain. Jamie bolted upright and I spent the next hour or so crying. I had pulled something in my neck and it petrified me because I couldn't move my head or even hold it up. Jamie was ready to call the ambulance, but not having insurance, I told him not to. I was popping advil and aleve the rest of the day and nothing helped. Anyway, so he went out to get me some Aleve. I laid in bed and he asked me to keep turning my head to stretch out the muscle in my neck. The pain was awful. I couldn't hold my head straight up until about the third day into our honeymoon. The first day was spent with pain pills, icy hot patches, muscle relaxing cremes - all of which did not help. After I healed from that though, all was good. I had been waiting for months to get my hair cut, so later in the day, after we had gone home and packed (and I could finally hold my head up - just not straight), Jamie went to get a travel cooler and a travel pillow for me. He dropped me off so I could get my hair cut. The stylist spent forever on it and it looked amazing. Of course I don't have the patience to do everything she does, so since my hair is natuarally wavy, I have less than amazing looking hair. LOL. But I am learning to tame it a little.

We did so much on our honeymoon. Our trip went like this: We drove through Virginia the first day and went straight to North Carolina, then Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, home. We had an awesome time. There was so much to see and do, which I don't feel like going into right now, and probably no one wants to read right now.

I have only received one pack of photos so far from one of Jamie's friends and just got them late last night when we stopped over their house, so I have not had any time to scan them all in yet. Look for those later this week. I also had a lot of honeymoon pictures picked out that I was going to scan in, but I didn't have the chance yesterday, so look for those later this week too. By the way, when we came back from our honeymoon, we dropped off 27 rolls of film at Wal-Mart. LOL. They know me by name there, so it wasn't so bad, but it sure was funny. Of course my camera messed up and did not date / time stamp them, so we had to sit down with 27 packs of pictures and try to remember what we did in what order and when we went exploring caves, I took like four pictures alone just in there. They all look the same now, so we had to sort through and figure out which ones came first, second, etc. That was not fun. What an awful time for my camera to malfunction!

Anyhow, if you've read this far, thanks! I only have a very few amount of pictures right now. They were the only ones that I actually had taken on my camera, and they are only "getting ready" pictures, but if you'd like to look at those until I get the ton of other ones up, here they are: http://pages.ivillage.com/grimmy35/id34.html

P. S. Forgot to add that the Best Man did an awesome toast. Something about Jamie used to tell him that he'd never get married, but as it turns out he just never thought he'd find the right person and how Jamie was living every guy's dream because he was marrying the "girl next door". LOL, which is something I actually told Jamie, "Do you know how lucky you are?! You snagged the girl next door!" and which he passed along to BM.

Also, my Garfield garter, which I was so excited about... I thought I put it in the wedding closet, but when I cleaned it out, that was not something that I took with me, so I have no idea where I put it. I realized when I got to the site that I didn't have it and I still haven't been able to find it. :( At least I had the extra throwing Garter on me.