The CC wedding thread!

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Ok everyone, post about your wedding here so we can chat!</p>

<p>I got married right before Christmas 20+ years ago. We didn’t have to pay for decor in the church because the Christmas trees and wreaths were up and the sanctuary was gorgeous. My bouguet had holly, ivy, mistletoe, red roses and pointsettia. I still believe it was gorgeous. My bridesmaids wore dusty rose and maroon dresses with ridiculous hats with netting. What was I thinking! I didn’t get to eat because the waiters took my plate when I got up to speak to someone. I still remember that with irritation. How funny.</p>

<p>Next?</p>

2

<p>I was married in August, 1980, on a beautiful September-like day. Our wedding was at a historic house in the Boston exurbs, with lovely grounds and a pond. We were married outdoors by the pond by a female Anglican minister. My Catholic parents were so relieved that I was finally getting married that they did not even mind that the wedding was not in the Catholic church! The music was by a family who played all sorts of string instruments - violins, violas, cellos for classical music during the ceremony, and banjos, etc., for all kinds of other music later. We had lots of children there. </p>

<p>Your bouquet sounds lovely, zoosermom!</p>

3

<p>Saturday will be 28 years for H and me. I was not the least “bridezillish”. I really didn’t care. And we didn’t have much money, either. My dad had been laid off. My entire wedding probably cost under $1000. Lots of borrowed stuff. My 3 sisters and H’s sister were my attendants. I let them all agree on a dress style, then pick their own color - they chose blue, green, peach, and yellow. My sister made all the bouquets with silk flowers. They served as centerpieces on the head table during the reception, which was a full dinner in the church basement. A doctor I worked with gave me advice in advance that the wedding wasn’t the big deal, the marriage was, and to put my efforts into that. I remember my wedding with fondness, as the start of good things to come.</p>

<p>That is despite the fact that things went wrong. Horrible weather - it poured. A thief stole purses out of the dressing room during the ceremony. We had two last-minute cancellations of key participants (groomsman, musician) the week before.</p>

<p>I do remember that I never got a turn in the bathroom to do my hair (6 women, one bathroom) so my pictures are ugly. And my mom made her own dress, and forgot to finish it. She didn’t realize it wasn’t finished until part way through the day. </p>

<p>Our ceremony was gorgeous. We had a lot of great music. The minister did a fabulous job, and my husband sang to me.</p>

4

<p>Happy anniversary Binx! And many more!</p>

5

<p>Married in '76. I was 20. Bought a really pretty, very “in” dress at the Nordstrom’s end-of-season sale of samples. Victorian, high collar, puffy sleeves, 4 button cuffs… yes, that Prarie-Victorian mishmash of the times.
All the men wore brown tuxes. Velvet lapels. Girls in lavender floral voile with high collars and puffy sleeves. Notice these are not the 70’s styles that have ever been considered “retro”
I don’t remember much about the wedding itself. For that “just look into his eyes and forget everything else” moment someone mentioned on the other thread - it was clearly not the wedding (we were too nervous and young) - it was when D1 decided to arrive in the emergency room, in full view of several firefighters and EMTs who were leaving as we arrived an upon whose gourney I delivered. Gave birth with my coat and knee socks on, but only focused on H’s eyes… full of love.</p>

6

<p>dragonmom, my parents’ wedding was very similar to yours – my mom had the lacy dress with puffy sleeves (and a hat!), and the guys wore brown tuxes. :D</p>

<p>Everybody knows about my wedding already, but here’s something I haven’t said before: as a wedding present, my parents gave us a sampler with the wedding vows on it, our names, and our wedding date, along with framed pictures of us when we were five and a framed picture of us on our wedding day. My parents have always had the same sampler (with their names and wedding date and pictures) hanging in their bedroom. Getting that sampler was the first thing that made me feel really married – I grew up looking at my parents’ sampler and thinking about what my wedding would be like some day.</p>

7

<p>Were married 27 years ago, in my mom’s living room. Sis was my bridesmaid, H’s bro was his best man. Fit 60 people in the house. Wore dresses off dept store racks bought that week, H’s suit bought the day before at Sim’s. Mom and aunt (both widowed young) made the flower arrangements the night before. H and I made a tape of our favorite dancing music and played it on H’s reel to reel. Best dance party…ever.</p>

8

<p>I had a very pretty wedding waaaay out in the country in a little old church that had been refurbished. I was in a fancy, lacy wedding dress though I had so wanted a simple one. Every simple white dress I tried looked like a nightgown on me, and finally an experienced saleswoman picked out a dress straight out of “Gone with the Wind”. I hated it, but she was right; I needed something fussy. Didn’t get that dress but had to go fancier than I had wanted. </p>

<p>The bridesmades were in cream and the men all wore cream tuxes. My maid of honor chose the colors and swore it would work, and it did. We carried pink and white flowers.</p>

<p>A piece of advice I would give to brides is to make your bouquets and ribbons brighter in color than you like. The pictures usually fade out somewhat. In fact, a lovely yellow dress I wore to my brother and sil’s wedding looks like a blah beige in the pictures. I wish I’d gone a brighter pink in my lilies.</p>

<p>The wedding was ever so pretty as was the buffet lunch at a church hall. Small wedding, about 70 people, but very, very pretty.</p>

9

<p>My wedding was quite the comedy of errors. August '74. (So I get the prize for the longest marriage so far–about as meaningful as a perfect attendance record in school, right?) It was wretchedly hot and humid and the synagogue’s air conditioning wasn’t keeping up at all. In all the photos my face is shiny as a new penny and my hair is a frizzy wreck. The florist got the color of the flowers wrong–referred to notes from our initial meeting, when I had selected yellow, rather then the blue/lavender I called to tell him about when I realized that all my bridesmaids would look awful in yellow. I was horrified when the flowers were unloaded from the van, but was quickly distracted from that when my sister, my matron of honor, never got to the rehearsal we scheduled 2 hours before the ceremony because she fell asleep while sunbathing at the hotel pool. I was also distracted by the 40 guests who arrived right in the middle of the rehearsal. My very OCD prospective father-in-law had arranged a coach bus to transport people from H’s home town–a 3 hour ride–but was so insanely worried about possible traffic or breakdowns or whatever that he scheduled them to leave two hours too early. So there I was rehearsing in jeans and a tee shirt with my hair in giant pink rollers, holding a bunch of grapes as my bouquet, when suddenly a busload of guests in formal attire started streaming in to the synagogue! They didn’t even have anywhere to sit at that point, much less anything to eat or drink. </p>

<p>Meanwhile, H had been fighting off a virus for days before and was running on sheer adrenaline. It all started to come apart during the ceremony, when he turned deathly pale and feverish and gigantic drops of perspiration starting running from his hairline down his forehead, then down to the end of his nose, from where they dripped onto his chest. That’s all I remember from the ceremony because I couldn’t focus on anything else but those drops. My mother recalls thinking he was going to keel and looking around wildly for someone big enough to catch him. The wedding ended mid-evening. We had planned to stay overnight at a local motel and them head off to Cape Cod for a short, cheap honeymoon. By the morning H was feeling mighty bad, but we pressed on, stopping at my parents house on the way for breakfast–where my brand new H literally passed out face first into his scrambed eggs. The doctor hospitalized him for IV fluids and we never did get our honeymoon. Instead we had a stream of leering, giggling nurses who would stop in his room and offer to pull the curtain around the bed so we could enjoy our honeymoon. I just wanted to jump out the window.</p>

<p>I may not have the most romantic, sentimental wedding memories, but the story has always been good for a laugh!</p>

10

<p>Oh, forgot that BIL’s gift was bringing his huge reel-to-reel contraption to the reception with a tape that faded from energetic dances toward “slow dances”… Now that I think of it, I may have never thanked him… Heading out to buy a 6 pack of fancy local brew…</p>

11

<p>Wow MommaJ, that’s a heck of a story! Did you ever get your honeymoon?</p>

12

<p>H was in grad school, so we decided to get married during spring break so we could have a honeymoon. Because we were living 1200+ miles from my hometown and trying to plan a wedding was becoming very difficult, my parents offered us some money (maybe $3500 or so… this was 25 years ago) and suggested we have a small wedding and use the money for the honeymoon or something. When we decided to do this, we had six weeks to plan. We had immediately family only at a nice little gazebo in downtown Austin, and our best friends for best man/maid of honor. We then had an awesome dinner at a restaurant that I don’t know if it’s still there (Green Pastures?) I remember that was also the first night I’d ever had an Italian Cream wedding cake, and still think it was the best I’ve ever, ever had. I think I found my dress at the Limited (which was relatively new at the time). My maid of honor wore her ‘going-away’ dress, which she’d worn eight weeks earlier at her own wedding, when I stood up for her. We stayed in one of the hotels (fifth or sixth floor) along the river in downtown Austin that night, and when we got up the next morning, saw the Capitol 10K unfolding in front of us from our window… kind of cool to watch from that vantage point.</p>

<p>The Thursday before the wedding, I was on my way home from work (we were flying out Friday morning for Texas). It was raining and such, and for some reason I thought to myself, “This weather sucks. I’d sure hate to be in an accident today when I’m leaving for my wedding tomorrow,” and for maybe the fifth or sixth time ever, I put on my seatbelt when I left work that afternoon. Sure enough, I was rear-ended at a traffic light less than a mile from my home. When I got out of my car (in the rain) to go talk to the other driver and tell her to pull off on the shoulder, she took off (luckily I’d had the where-with-all to look at her license plate). So I got home, called the police, filed a report, then called the doctor. Got seen by someone, who prescribed me valium and maybe Tylenol #3 or something for my whiplash. I literally think I might have gone through the windshield had I not had my seatbelt on. The doctor warned me that I should not both take these drugs and drink on my wedding night, or there would be no wedding night. So I tried to go without the meds so I could drink champagne, but my neck hurt really bad, so I ended up taking them on our honeymoon (a cruise), and not drinking then. The last day of our cruise we went snorkeling, and I got the worst sunburn I’ve ever seen on the backs of my legs… couldn’t even let water run down them in the shower. The next day I had to get on an airplane (wearing a sundress so nothing would touch the back of my legs) and fly back to Madison where you deplane onto the tarmack and walk outside into the terminal… in late March… and it was snowing, and here I was in my sundress with a sweater on. </p>

<p>When I got back to Madison, the police notified me that they’d located the girl who’d hit me, and supplied insurance information, etc. They also got evidence from her car, which was damaged. </p>

<p>So, I was Catholic at the time (and felt an extreme need to please my parents, who did not know my husband and I had been living together for ten months prior to the wedding), and we could not get married in the Catholic church with only six weeks notice. So after we got back to Madison, we had the usual pre-marriage counseling required by the church, then got married by the priest in the church a couple of months later (two friends of ours were witnesses). </p>

<p>Oh, we got married on St. Patrick’s Day, but that’s just because it coincided with the first Saturday of my husband’s spring break. Last year on our anniversary, we were in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day… kind of cool. But no, not a drop of Irish blood in either one of us.</p>

<p>I sure hope my daughters have weddings that our less traumatic than ours!</p>

13

<p>

Man, I didn’t even know Nordstroms existed in 1976, being from Houston. All those years that I missed out on Nordstroms shopping… so sad! I’m making up for it now, though.</p>

14

<p>We had to head right back to law school as soon as H recovered, and never really got to reschedule the honeymoon. But we’ve been fortunate enough to have lots of lovely vacations over the years, so I certainly don’t feel deprived.</p>

<p>You know, I realize I left out one more detail from our wedding. In the middle of the night before the wedding my prospective father-in-law, (he of the early bus scheduling) had some kind of unprecedented allergic reaction that closed up his throat, and had to rush from the motel to the ER, so he and my prospective mother-in-law had virtually no sleep that night. They didn’t even tell us till much later, because they didn’t want anything negative to affect our big day–little did they know the negatives that were in store! It’s some consolation that years later when we planned a very big and posh 50th wedding anniversary for the in-laws, everything went off without a hitch–even an impending hurricane managed to veer away just in time. So I guess all our special event bad karma got used up in one fell swoop.</p>

15

<p>We picked a nice date in the summer of 1982, but my in laws best friend’s kid had already chosen that date, so we moved it (that couple is divorced) to a date a few weeks sooner. Another friend of theirs had the church on the day we wanted so we went a day sooner (that couple is also divorced) Maybe the flexibility to change dates also was an inherent roll with the punches flexibility in our marriage??</p>

<p>My brilliant mother got a job at the best wedding shop in the county and got me an amazing expensive dress as well as all the other dresses, tuxes, rings, etc at a major discount. </p>

<p>We went on a cruise for our honeymoon where I learned that despite every one assuring me you cannot feel the boat move, I could feel it move and I get seasick :(</p>

<p>How many of you are in touch with your attendants? I think we see 1/3 of them and do Christmas cards with one or two, and have no clue about the others.</p>

16

<p>We dutifully ate our year-old fondant-encased top tier last January, so we’re among the youngest. I’ve been entirely unable to keep from drizzling out various details over the past year or so in wedding-related threads, so pretty much everyone’s heard everything.</p>

<p>Things you don’t know:
My husband was entirely in charge of the music, though. I didn’t know what I was walking down the aisle to until I was walking down the aisle-- Bach’s Air, which, several years ago as my husband and I sat on my bed sharing a set of headphones and listening to music together, my husband professed to be “the most perfect piece ever written.” Hearing it played as I saw my groom at the altar definitely made my heart skip a beat.</p>

<p>A bird kamakazi’d itself smack into the grand window of the church, leaving a big greasy wingprint on the glass, right before I walked down the aisle. There’s a great picture of my dad and I looking and pointing, completely gobsmacked by what had happened.</p>

<p>During the ring ceremony, my husband got thrown off by the engagement ring being on my right hand, and so when I was supposed to place the ring on his finger, he stuck out his right hand. There’s a sweet picture of us kneeling side by side in reflection after taking Communion, where my husband took my right hand in his left and gave it a tender kiss. I sighed, squeezed his hand, and whispered, “…where’s your ring??” He whispered back, “It’s on my left hand!” as he held out his right. I whispered, “That’s not your left hand!!” and we tried to stifle our irreverent giggling throughout the rest of the Eucharist.</p>

<p>Can’t resist linking to some pictures… Mods, feel more than welcome to take it down if you deem the photos I sent to my husband’s grandmother as being “inappropriate”! =)</p>

<p>[aibarr’s</a> wedding photos](<a href=“Photo Storage”>Photo Storage)</p>

17

<p>

</p>

<p>A very wise man! If only I could get a family friend who is planning the wedding of the year right now to understand that! D is in this wedding and we talk about this same advice often.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Sadly, really only my brother and his wife and once in a while H’s brother.</p>

18

<p>aibarr- beautiful wedding. lots of love in them-there photos…</p>

19

<p>aibarr, a friend’s daughter just became engaged over the weekend and I was telling her about your wedding photos. I love the style. They really tell a story. When I read this thread last night before I went to bed, I was hoping you would post! Thanks.</p>

20

<p>aibarr - beautiful photos. I love your dress, and the bouquets. And the two of you look so perfect together.</p>

<p>Attendants we are still in touch with: Well, all my attendants were sisters - mine and H’s - so yes, I’m still in touch with them. H’s attendants were his brother (still in touch), my sister’s H (no - they’re divorced) He was a last minute replacement for H’s childhood friend who dropped out the week before - and we haven’t seen since, a friend from college (no - haven’t seen since his wedding a few years later), and another friend from college (yes, he married my college roommate, and we’re all still close.)</p>

<p>The musician who dropped out last minute was also a college friend, whom we have since lost track of. His replacement was the music minister from my parents’ church (where we were married) and we are still in touch.</p>

<p>Thanks for the anniversary wishes, Zooser. I am driving my D up to PA on Saturday to the summer camp where she is working this summer. It will be the second (I think) anniversary H and I have not spent together.</p>