Wedded Bliss

So, the wedding went off relatively hitch-free, although the week leading up to it was rather nervous breakdown-inducing.

The highlights (and lowlights):

*Exactly one week before the wedding, I came down with a wicked bad cold, the kind that stuffs your head up completely and makes it feel like you are carrying around 20 pounds of snot. Since the end result of colds for me is usually laryngitis, I was worried that I would have no voice by the wedding. Luckily, I managed to conserve my voice.
*The cold exacerbated my usual insomnia by waking me up about 8 times a night.
*What I really needed was to stay home in bed, but I had to work on Monday and Tuesday. There’s nothing like an 11-hour work day to help you get over a cold.
*My insomnia was so bad that week that I took to getting out of bed in the middle of the night to read. The good news: I finished a book for the first time in weeks. The bad news: It was by Dan Brown.
*The week reached its nadir as I was walking to the rehearsal and subsequent dinner. I was in a great mood. Everything seemed to be coming together. The weather was beautiful. Things were going really well. Then my mother called to tell me that she had the flu and wouldn’t be there that night and suddenly, I was facing the possibility that my mother might miss the wedding.
*Nothing was ready at the hotel for the rehearsal, so I politely but firmly ordered the staff around until I got what I wanted. Then I took charge of the rehearsal, and all that bossiness made me feel much better.
*People kept coming up to me at the rehearsal dinner and marveling at how calm I was. But at that point, it was really too late to change anything, so there didn’t seem to be much point in stressing.
*The night before the wedding, I went to bed and 11 p.m., totally exhausted. I woke up at 3 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. Grr.
*The wedding went very well, despite the fact that I was operating on no sleep. I had my hair done and then headed down to the hotel to get ready in the bridal suite. The suite was really nice. My bridesmaids and another friend all arrived and they were just amazing and helpful, and everything was great.
*At one point, it seemed like everything was going wrong (the flowers hadn’t arrived and when they did, some of them were missing; my mother was calling me every five minutes asking my questions I didn’t know the answer to), but within another half-hour, it had all fallen into place.
*Baby brought champagne and June brought cheese, crackers, fruit, and cookies. They rock. We had a great time getting ready.
*We were listening to some shitty music on the hotel TV, but then they played two songs that I really like in a row, both of which remind me of the demise of previous relationships, so that seemed somehow very appropriate for the day.
*My mother made it to the hotel. By the way she was dancing at the reception, you would never know she was sick at all.
*The ceremony was really short and very nice. I broke out my acting training and did some super enunciation. Later, Lord Kissington told me that I sounded sort of British, but hey, maybe that’s what proper enunciation sounds like. Right before I headed down the aisle, June told me to make sure I looked at Lord K during the ceremony. I did this, but for the first half of the ceremony, he was looking at the judge, which was pretty funny.
*The cocktail hour was sort of a blur. We greeted everyone as they walked in and then we were sort of left alone for a while, which was nice since it gave me a few minutes to decompress.
*The rest of the wedding was great. I had loads of fun at our table. The night was pretty much how I had envisioned and hoped it would be. I had a sort of vague picture in my head of us surrounded by our friends, dancing up a storm to songs that reminded me of us and all of our friends. We ended the night exactly this way, with everyone dancing to “How Soon Is Now.” It was kind of perfect.
*As the reception was ending, I realized that I was surrounded by a bunch of drunk people I didn’t know, so I hightailed it up to the suite, where I found a bunch of my friends (not hijacking the suite, just up there to collect their belongings). I flopped on the couch and someone handed me a drink. Everyone was being really funny, and it was all so much fun.