Wedding Part 1: The Pre-Party

Okay internet world... to save myself from getting carpal tunnel any earlier than fate determines, and to save your eyesight because I'm such a giver, I am going to split all of the wedding adventures into small, manageable (<--- relative term) posts. This will also help inspire me to get this all down. As it turns out, sitting down to write the story of the greatest day of your life is a VERY daunting task.

Gather round, today is the story of the week leading up to the wedding. Author's note... I did not take pictures of any of this stuff. I must have been very distracted. Weird, right? :c)

After enduring many raised eyebrows in response to the following conversation:

Anyone: So how many days are you taking off before your wedding?
Me: I think just the Thursday and Friday before.

I decided that perhaps people knew what they were talking about so I went ahead and took the whole week beforehand off. Hallelujah for all of you naysayers because I think having those extra few days increased my sanity factor (<--- another relative term) by about 100fold.

So, the weekend before the wedding you were all probably eating hotdogs, hamburgers and celebrating the birth of our nation. I, meanwhile, was focusing on doing whatever I could to forget about the fact that hurricane July 9th was dangerously close to making landfall. Ryan and I went up to the lake to spend time with my immediate family, and wonderful Grandpa, the Friday before the wedding. I allowed all of us a weekend of blissful ignorance... then Tuesday the whirlwind started.

Tuesday morning started with a bang. Or rather a phone call. Our wedding coordinator sent me an email asking me to call her... when I did she proceeded to tell me that she would not be in town the coming weekend. Our wedding coordinator. The ONE person at the venue we have talked to... for one year and 3 months. The ONE person that we have informed of all of our vendors. The ONE person that knows what our catering menu is. The ONE person that could hopefully even pick us out of a line up. No big deal. The instant she was telling me this little story I decided that once you get to a point where you can count the number of days pre-wedding on one of your hands... everything is just funny. So we took it in stride and set up a meeting to give our new wedding coordinator a crash course on the Martin nuptials the next day. We also put together our favor/escort bags. The Ford factory has nothing on the assembly line we got going. More on that to come in my wedding "details" post sometime in the future.

Wednesday we went to meet said new wedding coordinator. Who actually rocked. Thank you, Angie! We also set out on a quest to find a wedding Barbie as a gift to Ava, our precious flower girl. (Totally unrelated side note: if you have not been to a Toys 'R Us in a while- Barbie has gotten preeeeeeetty Lady-of-the-Night-esque. Ryan decided if we ever have a daughter she will only be playing with puppets we make out of paper bags.) Then we ran various other odd errands that resulted in me buying some honeymoon garb while Ryan and Grandpa sat patiently waiting for my Mom & I. I do not remember what the initial mission was, but I'm sure we completely accomplished it. :c) Then Ryan and I headed back to K-town from the lake to pack for the honeymoon and to re-arrange the piles and piles of boxes we have in our front 2 rooms. That way at our sweet neighbors who offered to bring in any wedding presents that showed up on our front porch might think we're hoarders, but at least they'd think we were ORGANIZED hoarders.

Thursday is when Ryan's family came in from Missouri and mine came in from Indiana. We decided that there weren't enough hours in the day for us both to get to see everyone. So Ryan was drafted for Team Missouri and I was drafted for Team Indiana. I met my parents at the airport and we caravaned with 12* of the total 16** hoosiers who were kind enough to come celebrate with us. The remainder of the night was spent catching up, drinking beer, learning that Ava can't go in the water when no one is around not because she can't touch the bottom but because "she might get lost," learning what color everyone's panties were and doing lots of laughing. I really do have the best family.

Friday morning started off with a run with JuJuBee, a long walk with Aunt Jan, Ash, Shiloh, Jules and Mom. Then we got ready to go, packed up all the wedding trappings we'd been collecting for the last year and some change and headed into town for the rehearsal. That concludes today's story, dollfaces. Tune in later for the tale of the rehearsal.

* Aunt Jan, Aunt Jean, Brian, Cousin Kara, Ava, Tripp, Almost-Cousin Miranda, Shiloh, Cousin Ashleigh, Self-Proclaimed Cousin Kyle, Natalie & Cousin Taylor

** Above plus Uncle Tom, Cousin Paul, Cousin Travis, Syndney & Grandpa