HitchDied

Recap: Hell Week

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The week before our wedding, I was a fucking nightmare mess of a hell bitch.

You may recall this extremely partial list of things that made me freak out during wedding week.  Let me expand with a few more stories:

  • When my aunt was stuck on the porch because I couldn’t hear her knock over the roar of our box fan, I took it out on Collin.  I’d been complaining about the noisy fan for months, constantly pleading with him to avoid using it despite our inadequate air conditioning upstairs.  So after I found my aunt waiting (extremely patiently, I have to note!) on my porch, I rudely demanded that Collin throw away the fan immediately.  I think I yelled something melodramatic like, “GET THAT FAN OUT OF MY SIGHT!”  And then I stormed out the door  to get lunch margaritas with my aunt and sister.  When we got back, not only was the offending box fan in the dumpster, but Collin had made a quick shopping trip to replace it with a delightfully quiet new fan.  Which earned him approximately 50,000 good almost-husband points.  I have a feeling I will be telling this story someday beginning with “Let me tell you how wonderful a husband your grandfather is.”

 

  • After cutting and running from the Extended Family Restaurant Seating Debacle, I popped in for a visit with my friend Annie, not only so I could rant at her and drink some of her whiskey, but also to raid my friend Abby’s (from whom Annie was subletting) costume chest (yes, Abby has a costume chest.  This is how my friends roll).  Abby’s costume chest is a vintage sailing trunk that she keeps on its side and uses as something of an end table in her living room (because unnecessary vintage furniture purchases are how Abby rolls).  Once I cleared it off and got it oriented upright I realized I didn’t have any idea how to open it.  There was a key in its central lock, but I couldn’t get it to turn.  The key was bent a bit and looked like it hadn’t been touched in a while, so I assumed it was decorative, not functional.  I asked Annie to help me try to figure it out, but she couldn’t get it either.  We contacted Abby, and she took a moment from her crazy busy opening-night-for-the-theater-company-I-run-is-tomorrow-and-so-is-my-flight-home schedule to text “Use the key.”  So we went back to trying the key.  I took a restroom break, and I heard Annie swear loudly from the living room.  I immediately knew what happened.  The key snapped off in the lock.  So then Annie and I spent a good twenty minutes trying to pick the lock on an antique sailing trunk with butter knives and tweezers.  I gave up first, lying on the ground literally cracking up—my wedding week had become a farce, and the only option was laughter with a potential rider for tears.  Annie earned Wedding Hero status by taking over the problem for me, calling a locksmith in the morning, saving not only my photobooth prop selection but my friendship with Abby.

 

Photo by Annie D.

  • The ceremony rehearsal was actually incredibly smooth sailing, especially considering we had twenty-sixpeople appearing in our ceremony (this is what happens when you have your twelve best friends walk you down the aisle).  I give all credit to our planner Shannon who a) was able to visualize the complicated ceremony from my amateur script b) knows how to wrangle 26 people, even the ones known as “the Muppets” or “the hootenanny” in part because they are so difficult to wrangle.

 Photos by Louis Stein. Unexpected advantage of friendor photographer? Having pro-level photos of the rehearsal. This one is one of my favorites from the entire weekend:

    • Once the ceremony was worked out, Collin made an announcement to the group that no one was allowed to ask me any more logistical questions.  He made sure everyone had Shannon’s number, his number, and my sister’s number, and I was completely absolved of DUTY to get the show on the road.  I just had to show up.  THIS WAS BRILLIANT, PEOPLE.  Make this announcement! Because from this point on, I was successfully able to switch into party mode in the time it took me to curl my hair (my long hair’s last hurrah, I kept saying) and drink some champagne with my best friends.  So I was ready to go PARTY at our rehearsal dinner, which I will recap next.

10 Comments

  1. I already want your wedding instead of mine, and you haven’t even gotten to the wedding part.

    • Careful, or we will have a Freaky Friday situation on our hands!

    • Everyone else’s wedding is always a little bit better because you didn’t have to plan it… or have the requisite breakdowns and freakouts and late crazy nights. You just get fun and pretty and vicarious-living joy. I can’t wait for my first post-wedded wedding in September. It’s going to be the BEST EVER.

      And whatever Lyn, I want your wedding too (downtown Santa Barbara, walkable, SoCal casual, all outdoors, dreamy). And I want Robin’s too (since I never got an elegant formal affair). I’m just wedding greedy… so long as I never have to plan another ever again.

      • WORD! I want to go to many, many more weddings that I didn’t have to plan and I don’t care how jealous I might get because YAY FOR WEDDINGS!

  2. Week before wedding is never calm… just go and read Lauren’s adventures, or I could expand and give you stories hehe ! But you made it, and your pictures are beautiful and looks like it was so much full of joy and so much fun.
    Question, what are you doing with your hands in the super cool rehearsal picture?
    I love how Collin announced that no more logistical questions were allowed. That’s the spirit.

    • I am pretty sure I was reordering my friends who walked me down the aisle, which I did pretty arbitrarily based on the color of dresses the ladies were going to be wearing (once I saw them in their actual dresses I made a couple of last-minute changes).

      I like that picture because it makes me feel like a movie director.

  3. I was a nightmare mess of a hell bitch TOO the week before the wedding. But Jason was initially even worse (though I then became worse in fixing his moods and absorbing the hell bitchness of the situation).

    Also, I am jealous that you got to enjoy your rehearsal dinner party, because that was hands down my lowest point of the wedding process. Even though we made that same oh-so-necessary “don’t call me announcement.” But you have to have a breakdown somewhere!

    Beautiful beautiful beautiful venue. Have I said that yet? So happy for you. Have I said that yet either?

    • Collin’s stress finally hit him about a week out, and it was hard for me because I was so used to being the stressed one, which is obviously not fair.

      My biggest breakdown was probably the day before the rehearsal dinner, and if I hadn’t gotten that out of the way I might have lost it at the rehearsal dinner at a particular moment I will describe in that post. [I mean, lost it even more than I did?]

      And thanks! These things are nice to hear.

  4. Collin is a GENIUS.

    So happy it got better!

    • I was embarrassed when his gave his mom the “don’t ask Robin any logistical questions” speech, but by time he was telling everyone that, I knew it was necessary.

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