I can Breathe again :)

For the past couple months prior to June 28,2012 I have been extremely stressed. The reason for this stress was preparing for my oldest daughter Amanda's wedding. She is not one of these people that gives you much time to plan. When she makes up her mind to do something she thinks and feels it should happen NOW. When her and her boyfriend Ed decided to actually get married, (after all they had been talking about it for a year or so) she told me that it would be in 2 months. 2 MONTHS is she kidding me, PLAN a wedding in 2 MONTHS???? You can't even order a wedding dress or for that matter make a wedding dress in that amount of time. We had the location for the wedding, that wasn't a problem. She wanted to have an outdoor reception...Ok but do you realize daughter dear that you are talking the last part of July when the weather normally is FREAKING HOT??? And the way the weather has been this summer she has got to be kidding, but she wasn't. Ok fine but we need a backup plan, you know in case of rain, which by the way we hadn't had any so far this summer and everything was drying up because of the FREAKING HOT WEATHER.


Ok now what do you want your wedding to look like? Any thoughts, as I keep a smile on my face when I ask her. No she really hadn't given that part any thought. She had the guy, had the ring, set the date, had the church so she would have to think about that, as I had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach because I know how she is when she makes up her mind. She will decide what she wants and it needs to be done NOW. Not in a few days/weeks but have it done like yesterday.

Well first on the agenda was she decided on her colors, Purple, Pink and Orange. At first I didn't quite grasp those colors mainly because I was thinking a little ahead as far as flowers, but hey it was at least a start. Then since we live in a small town and not many places to buy a wedding dress I started looking up places nearby where we could go look and pray they had dresses in stock she could buy and have altered in time. Oh and did I forget to mention not only did we need to find a wedding dress but we needed to pick out some affordable bridesmaid dresses for the 2 friends that were standing up for her. They are both single mothers with a tight budget. Ok the headache was starting and let me tell you it didn't go away for day AFTER the wedding.


Now going shopping with my daughter is a challenge in itself. I need to mention here that she has these ideas in her head and there is no deviating from those ideas. Now trying to find those ideas is another story. She gets very frustrated quickly when she can't find what she is looking for when she steps into a store. But again I keep the smile on my face and tell her it will be fine we will find what she wants or we can find some material and I will make her wedding dress exactly how she wants it. The first place we went to turned out to be closed that day, oops forgot to check that little detail, but then in my defense why would a store be closed in the middle of the week is beyond me. But that's ok I had my list of stores. The next store we went to was this small little local bridal shop. Cute and I saw potential, all Amanda saw was to many choices and I could see she was already getting stressed and I was waiting for the explosion and her just throwing up her hands and saying forget it, we will just elope. I told her calm down and just look we have time. AHHHH did I just actually smile and tell her we had time NOOOOOOO. But I again being the mother said it would be fine. Every dress we were shown just wasn't what she had envisioned for herself. The lady showing us dresses was so nice and so calm with Amanda which made it easier on me. I looked around myself and found a couple to show her that I thought she might like. She ended up trying on about 5 dresses in this shop. With each dress she tried on she was getting frustrated because for one they were to big on her so she couldn't tell exactly how they would look, but I explained to her that these were basically sample dresses so they needed to be a little bigger for a wide variety of people to try on. The first dress she tried on was one I had found and even though it wasn't her size I could tell it looked beautiful on her. I had to look away so she wouldn't see the tears in my eyes... MY DAUGHTER WAS IN A WEDDING DRESS... After the 5th dress she said she was done, this wasn't fun anymore and wanted to leave. I quickly helped her out of the dress and told her that was fine we could leave. I didn't want her to have a meltdown this early in the game. I knew one was coming I just didn't want it to be so quick. We left the store and discussed the dresses she tried on as we were on our way to the next store. The next store we went to wasn't that far away, and when we got there, there was this young girl sitting behind the counter, she never really looked up at us and we started looking at the dresses on the racks. Well after about 15 min the girl ask if she could help us, DUH... The girl asked what she was looking for and when was her wedding. When she gave her the date of just 2 months ahead, the girl looked at both of us like we had all of a sudden grown another head. We were told that wasn't possible and she couldn't help us and basically she just walked away. Well needless to say we left. We then again discussed looking at a couple more places on my list and she said she didn't want to but that she really liked the 1st dress she tried on, the one that I had picked out for her. I told her then if that is what she wanted and she liked it then we should go back there and get it. Which is what we did. Now all we had to do was set up for the alterations. The bridal shop consultant was wonderful and so helpful which I am so happy and relieved for.

We also looked in this shop for the bridesmaid dresses and she found one she really liked and we thought they would look good on both girls. It also came in the color she wanted or at least that is what the book said. Well long story short a week later, turns out the dress no longer came in the color she wanted. So now we had to look again. Here again I was the calm one, trying to keep the peace and told her if we couldn't find what she wanted I could always make the dresses. Even though secretly I wasn't looking forward to it but I would if needed. After all I still had my granddaughter and great granddaughter and myself to figure out what we were going to wear. We looked and looked at so many dresses my head was spinning. Nothing was what she had envisioned. NOTHING, did I mention NOTHING??? Well in talking to my mother a couple days later about what she was needing to wear she told me she found a couple dresses online she thought would work for the bridesmaids. I went to the website and looked at what she was talking about and yes they were pretty close to what Amanda had envisioned. I quickly copied the website and sent it to my daughters phone so she could look it up. She did and she was excited because yes that is what she wanted. So I called to see if they had the sizes we needed and they did. We made plans to go to the store that night when she got off work. WELL turns out they weren't exactly what she wanted but she guessed they would work. While walking around the store we ran across a dress in the exact color she wanted, style was good for both girls as they both had different shapes and this dress we both though would look good on both girls and wow they had them in the sizes we needed. We talked to the sales clerk and ask if we could put these dresses on hold till the next day so the two girls could try them on. That was not a problem and we put 4 dresses on hold in a couple different sizes just in case. The next day Amanda took the two girls there and they tried them on and they fit, they fit great, they looked great. I got a text from my daughter telling me they worked. I got off the phone and did a happy dance. We now had the bridal gown and both bridesmaid dresses.


We had also found a dress for my granddaughter and great granddaughter and actually she found a dress for me. I was just going to use a dress I already had and just alter it. But she liked the dress she found, I tried it on and it looked great so we got it. We were done dress shopping YEAH.

She decided on what type of decorations she wanted. What the flowers would look like. Which we took my mother with and picked out all the flowers. My mother was going to make all the bouquets, corsages, for the guys and for the vases for the tables. We found the right colors she was looking for, the vases in the colors she was looking for, ribbons etc. She decided she wanted little gift bags for everyone at the wedding that would hold bubbles, matchbooks and a little candy. I made up the pattern for the bags, she scanned it on the computer and put the initial and date on the bags where she wanted it. Printed them out then I cut them out, and glued them all together and put ribbons on the handles. I made 75 little bags. Her and Ed filled them all up. We had a few extra so we figured we could use them to hold the candy she wanted on the tables. We shopped for table coverings, a few hanging lanterns for the ceiling in the pavilion at the park where they were having the reception. We found everything in the colors she wanted. WHEW

There is a Kitchen supply store in town that did catering also, and when they went down to check it out she found they did a cookout type of food also. So that is what they decided to do. So the food for the reception was cookout style. Hamburgers, hot dogs and brats, salads, veggies, chips, fruit and punch. All sounded good and everyone likes cookout food. Amanda had found a picture of a cake she thought was really really nice and so they took the picture to the lady who was doing the cake and she said no problem she could do that. Wow things were really falling into place in a short period of time. Well not without a lot of stress, delays, meltdowns , but still all in all falling into place.
Needless to say I was sweating out the weather thing. After all this summer so far was a scorcher. And even though it hadn't rained in I can't remember when, we still needed to consider that possibility. We kept track of the weather on a daily basis. Because we needed to know how to proceed and what to tell the caterer and cake lady. And of course would have to rethink the reception ideas because we had gotten things for picnic tables not round tables that would be at the church if we needed to do reception there. In the end we had the reception at the park. It was a BEAUTIFUL sunny nice cool slightly windy day. You couldn't have asked for more perfect weather. I was relieved.

The decorating, the rehearsal, the wedding, the reception went off without a hitch. It was an all around WONDERFUL BEAUTIFUL day for a wedding. She had lots of friends and family there to share in her day. I had some wonderful close friends there and it was great to be able to visit with them as much as I could with everything going on. Everyone had a good time as was evident in all the smiles and the pictures we have seen so far. Although it was all wonderful, I am glad it is all over. Even now almost 2 weeks later I am just now starting to feel like myself again and not be so stressed and so very very tired.
I know this post was long and lots of pictures, but I hope you enjoyed a small glimpse in what went into getting my daughter married and trying to make her day a very special and memorable day. Thanks for reading.