Wedding Day - Part One

Filled with excitement, I hardly slept. I kept waking up just about every hour. At around 6 am, I gave up and decided to take advantage of the fact that the sun had not risen yet and have a nice BIG pre-fast cup of COFFEE. This would help me avoid that caffeine-withdrawal headache that accompanies so many of my fasts.

LO woke up a bit later and then we were off to run errands. Once those were all done, I dropped LO off at Hebrew school and headed to pick up my Dad and his wife. (I had completely forgot about fasting when I invited them to breakfast!) I made a bagel for post-fast while they were eating hoping this would help them not feel uncomfortable that we were not eating. We spent a little time visiting and then I dropped them back at their hotel, went to pick LO up from Hebrew school and then headed back home. It was at that moment when I panicked and realized that the flowers had not yet been delivered. My panicked state was all for naught because when I walked in the house, there they were. (This is my bouquet. LO's was a miniature version of this one.)

We spent the next hour packing stuff in the car and trying to be sure not to forget everything. Just as we were going to get in the car, LO asked me to print her homework for her! She was going to spend the night at a friend's house after the wedding and would need her homework! Umm...talk about bad timing. Despite her lack of a printer and our laziness to hook her up to our printer, we managed.

And finally we were off to the Shul!

Remember my chuppah nightmare? In the end we decided to go with the chuppah that belonged to our shul. (Remember that it was not in the best of repair, but I decided to have faith that it would all work out somehow.) I kept talking with out Temple Administrator and he told me several times that he was going to do a trial run and set the whole thing up but with the High Holidays just around the corner he just got too busy to ever do it. He asked that PHD arrive early to the Shul on the wedding day to help set it up. When we got to the Shul (late of course) I went into the sanctuary and the chuppah was all set up and way more beautiful than I could have ever expected. I was so excited that I was literally jumping up and down...and what else did I do? I of course took a picture with my phone and uploaded it to Facebook.

While PHD was working on getting everything set up, I went to the library which I planned to use as a dressing room. When I got there, I was greeted with a broken doorknob and so we were never able to get in there! I headed to the kitchen where my friend was baking challot for us. She also happened to be the person who was going to do LO's hair and who was going to help me with my veil. We decided it was apropos that she would help us get ready in the kitchen since she and I became friends when we were baking challot for the high holidays there years ago.

I searched for a quiet place to do some last minute davening and from that point on, things seemed to be happening at warp speed. LO and I headed off to get dressed. Then we ran back to the kitchen for hair and veil. (This is when we realized that we left all the hair stuff at home. Thankfully I had remembered the most important thing...the veil!) I had forgotten to do the corsages and boutonnieres for everyone so I had to run and quickly give those out and then run to the office to sign the ketubah. It was simply CRAZY! (Oh yeah and I decided I had to take a few pictures here and there in the middle of all of it!)

On to the bedeken. The Rabbis (Yes, plural. One who is our Rabbi and one who is PHD's very good friend) gathered my Dad and PHD's Mom. And along with LO, we all recited the blessing for the children. It was one of my favorite moments of the day to have my Dad blessing me, PHD's Mom blessing him and me and PHD blessing LO. PHD and I looked at each other as my veil was placed and I don't think I stopped smiling from that moment on.

And then it was time...