A Lakeside Storybook Wedding

Hello ladies, I’m back to formally introduce A Lakeside Storybook Wedding and unfurl the carpet for my RECAPS! Can we get a woo to the hoo, an amen sistah and an audible sigh of “fiiiiiiiiinally” up in he’ah?!?!

Today when the mister burst through the door with the news that the oh-so-longed-for CD of professional wedding photos had just arrived in our mailbox, I felt overcome with happiness to return to the hive.

So let’s start at the beginning of the Big Day.

Professor Paisley and I awoke together after a pretty good night’s sleep. Thank goodness insomnia-girl (yours truly) actually slept like a babe due to pre-wedding exhaustion ”¦ remember, our wedding was completely DIY and an at-home, backyard hootenanny. There was a LOT to do in the week leading up! I’m pretty sure the day before I was running from task to task and didn’t even stop to eat. Mama Paisley made a sandwich and chased after me to shove it in my mouth so I could eat. True story.

Anyway, on the morning of we stopped for breakfast and coffee on our way to drop me off at the hair salon at 11. Once there, I learned they were short-staffed and only had two girls for our group of six. Not all the ”˜maids were arrived yet, and since there wasn’t much I could do about any of that, I decided to “let it roll off my shoulders” like mom always advises, and join my maid of honor at a nail salon next door for some luxurious pampering.

Or so I thought.

That’s when I got the phone call that the seating chart was missing, as well as a whole bunch of the place cards I’d spent hours on the night before. And THEN, our caterer called, and said the credit card (which she was supposed to have run five days earlier) just got declined (it shouldn’t have”“–nothing was wrong with it) and she needed a nearly-$1,000 check TODAY. Say whhaaaaaat?!?! So, I resolved those issues and forced myself to get over it and let it go. While my feet soaked, I juggled a notepad on my lap and re-drew the seating chart for 100 people. Yep, from memory. Luckily, I was able to do it, although it took about 45 minutes and was rather annoying and stressful.

I swear little evil wedding gnomes were going around stealing wedding charts, place cards and other small things during our wedding day.

An hour later and I was next door back at the salon. My brother came to pick up the seating chart. I’m sorry I don’t have pictures, all of us were too busy thoroughly enjoying mimosas, doughnuts and hanging out. I didn’t even notice the time go by! All of a sudden it was 2:30 PM (half an hour after I should have left) and my makeup hadn’t been started. Oops. They rushed through my makeup and we ended up getting out of there at 3.

I jumped into my maid of honor’s car and then all of the makeup promptly melted off. It was about 120 degrees in the car! Oops again. (Always, always wait for the AC first). In this case the car was a borrowed one without AC.

We got to the bed and breakfast at the lake for pictures where our lovely photographer Tanja Lippert had been capturing all the individual shots of the bridal party, plus their getting-ready shots. I darted upstairs to wash my face, peel off the false lashes which looked, well SO false, and redo my makeup (it had really all sweated off). We discovered the bed and breakfast had TURNED OFF the AC in the bridal suite, the proprietor’s excuse being “because we had to run the shower for my mother-in-law” UM. Since when did turning on a shower mean you had to turn off the AC in one room on an 86-degree day?!?! That didn’t make sense to any of us.

Quick to action, my girls brought up a fan, when that didn’t cool down the room, one of them checked a room next to our suite and found it open, unoccupied and AC’d!!! We quickly commandeered the room for makeup-doing, then hopped back into the bridal suite for me to slip into my lovely gown, the Lia by Melissa Sweet.

And as all such photos deserve a soundtrack, please click play:

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The boys getting ready:

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All photos by Tanja Lippert.

Now that I’ve officially introduced you to our wedding day, next up I’ll rewind to share some behind-the-scenes pre-wedding set up as well as the rehearsal, so please stay tuned.

Tell me, do you plan to stick to a strict timeline the day of, or would you prefer to roll with it? Or let someone else be in charge like I did? If you don’t want to leave timeline-tracking to your salon (obviously that plan backfired for me a little), will you plan to designate the clock-watching duty to a bridal party member?

Either way, just remember to enjoy the day. But not to the point where you forget to check the clock even once while getting ready, like I did. Also, start earlier! I’m not a morning person so I was OK with starting later, since our wedding wasn’t until 6. But if I could redo the day, I’d probably have everybody arrive at the salon by 9.

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BLOGGER

Mrs. Paisley

Location:

Orange County, CA

Occupation:

Journalist

Wedding Date:

June 2010

Venue:

Family Lake House