07-07-07

Thus beings a very long entry:

The night before I was to be married, my sister and mother threw me a bachelorette party. My aunts and cousins were there, along with my bridesmaids, two who had arrived the day before and one who arrived during the party. The party was wonderful.
My sister majored in Rec Management so you knew before hand the games were going to be great, and my mother did the decorations so of course they were fantastic.
The party was Mexican themed (because that’s were Ben and I were going on our honeymoon). I wore a Mexican wedding dress and a little chilie-pepper crown.
We had horse races (with Mexican horses, or crate paper) and used beans to bet on the winner. We had Margaritas and lots of chips and Salsa. We played a hilarious mad-lib game that my sister created and then my aunt taught us a winking game (because you have to know how to flirt when you are married.) We even played a little bit of Pass the Sign before the boys came back from playing Frisbee. The finale was a Piniata that was filled with lotions and candy. The game was that however many hits it took for me to break open the Piñata, was how many children I had. I got up to 27 before Ben took over (and his hits counted -1) so we ended up 6.

Kris and Kara stayed the night with me in my room. We talked for a long time and tried to come up with a song to play in the background during the slideshow of Ben and I. We went through a bunch of songs before we gave up and decided to watch “music and Lyrics” which ended up being hilarious, and we all decided that “POP goes my heart” was definitely the song. If only we had a way to play it…
We got to sleep around 2am, which I thought was extremely reasonable.

The next day I had to wake up early. I specifically scheduled the wedding at 4pm so I could sleep in, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be. Ben’s brother had turned 8 a few days before, and his parents had scheduled his baptism for that morning at 9am. Ben was the one who was going to baptize him.
Megan picked me up and drove me over to the church. Through the whole baptism I was texting three of the bridesmaids, mostly little cracks about “POP goes my Heart” and “I’m sleeping with a clown above my head.” Put the baptism was wonderful, and the testimonies were particularly touching.

Megan picked me up and had breakfast and a special treat waiting for me. It was then off to the hair appointment! On the way I started freaking out about the wedding and “what was I doing?” and so on and so forth. Megan had to deal with me being very bi-polar for the rest of the morning. She handled it very well. I had a wonderful time getting my hair done. The girl who did it is a very good friend of mine and the three of us talked until she finished. She finished 45 minutes early, so Megan and I went to the mall so Megan could rescue me once again from a crisis.

We got home precisely on time, and the girl who was doing my make-up was already there. I quickly changed into my dress and Kara and I decorated Acouchi with wedding ribbons.




Then it was make-up time! She did an amazing job, even though Ben showed up early and we had to shoo him out of the room.

Then Ben and I were off to the temple. We arrived 15 minutes early and then I discovered a flaw in my plan:
I had arranged Ben to drive me up there 1) so we would be there on time, and 2) so I one of us would not be at the temple, waiting for the other to show up, fretting if they were not coming.
This worked, except now we were at the temple, waiting for our parents to show, fretting that they would be very late. As it turns out, my parents were only 10 minutes late, and his parents were only 15 minutes late.

It wasn’t what I expected. I thought you got the Bride’s dressing room all to yourself, but that is untrue. You have to share it with the other brides who are getting married. In my case, there were three other brides while I was getting ready. It was very crowded. I had expected a lot of time for Ben and I to be by ourselves for a while beforehand, also untrue. We were told to wait until situations became available, which only ended up being three minutes. I did, however, manage to hyperventilate during that time.
We did get to meet with the sealer, who told us that our sealing had moved from the smallest room, to the next smallest room, because we had too many people.
All I can say is some people are DANG lucky I was apathetic by that point, and that they had another room available, I would have marched in and asked certain people to leave.

Once we were at the alter, it was perfect. Ben looked so handsome, and the room was so pretty (although too big, and it was quite tacky that so many chairs were empty, curse plans being ruined by other people!!) and then we were married. Ben and I both looked expectantly at the sealer, waiting for hime to say something like “you may now kiss the bride.” He laughed and asked what we were waiting for “do you need permission?” well, yes actually, His bishop banned us from kissing over three months ago and we were hoping a sealer’s authority would override a bishop’s authority so, yes; We did need permission.

I went back to change. By this time, the room was all mine. Once I got to look around, I realized how stunning the bride’s room is.

And then we came out, and I was handed my bouquet, and out amazing photographer was there, and the families were waiting outside for us and taking pictures like crazy. And my beautiful bridesmaids were there, all dresses up and looking amazing and…wait. I was only counting three bridesmaids. Where was the forth? Where was Kris?
But, no time for that! Pictures ensued. More pictures, and more pictures. It could not be delayed further, bridesmaid pictures were taken with one missing (that’s ok, there will be more pictures at the party later).



Soon, Me and Ben and the photographer were the only ones left. Which was good, because a storm was moving in, and fast. We finished just in time and scurried back to the car before we blew away.

Safe in our car, driving out of the temple parking lot, it started to rain. Luckily, the storm did not follow us home. By the time we reached the park there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun was shining brightly.

The park was decorated beautifully. The tables were decorated in the wedding colors, there was an archway decorated with red roses,

and the cake!! The cake was amazing!! I had wanted a pretty cupcake cake, but My mother-in-law out did herself. Not only was it stunningly beautiful, it was so delicious to eat!!


There were millions of pictures taken, by this time Ben’s Groomsman were there wearing the Groomsman T-shirts, and My beautiful bridesmaids had changed into jeans and their Bridesmaid T-shirts.

Following pictures and a slight mishap with my party dress being left at the house and the bathroom doors being locked, but this was taken of in record speed and soon I was ready for fun!

The food was delicious (all vegetarian). But I didn’t eat very much because I was so excited to see all my family and I had things to take care of. This is when the problem arose: there was still no sign of Kris.
It became very apparent to me that she was not coming. This did not cause me much concern as Kris is like that, and I wasn’t surprised, and I lover anyway, no matter what, and it was the happiest day of my life so far and nothing could have really fazed me unless someone had told me that rather than just not showing up, she had been seriously hurt or killed.
The problem was that my other bridesmaids did not know Kris as well as I did, and they were panicked because they though I thought the day was ruined. Afterall, your best friend not showing up to be the bridesmaid at your wedding is supposed to be a disaster.
This made me concerned, because I did not want my bridesmaids to be concerned. Unfortunately, my brain was so scattered, that I saw this as a huge problem, but I couldn’t think of a way to tell them that is was OK. I decided to bribes was the way to go.
I took them aside and gave them the presents I had been so excited for them to open. It seemed to work ok.


Then came the speeches, the cutting of the amazing cake, and more pictures. My uncle has already unloaded his cannon, and the small cousins were happily launching marshmallows into the meadow. Well, actually, the small cousins had been shoved aside by the male cousins/uncles, who seemed to be more excited about the cannon than the children.



Too soon, it was time to go. I through the bouquet (and my favorite cousin caught it!) and Ben and I drove off in our Oreo-decorated car.

*all pictures provided by my favorite cousin, Kara*