Wedding in a Nutshell: Saturday Morning

Saturday morning began for me and the girls with a series of phone calls. Our day of coordinator, a friend of the family, was repeatedly calling all our cell phones because she was having trouble picking up our guest shuttles. My amazing girls let me sleep through the first couple contact attempts but by the third we were all up anyway. Apparently the shuttle (should have been shuttles plural) was waiting for us on an army base and the DOC had conflicting information about how a civilian might retrieve it. While one of my girls handled the shuttle screw up, another one gave me a delicious morning massage! I now fully understand why she gets morning massages from her husband, they're definitely a decadent treat.

The Aqua Terra

A short while later, we headed down to the resort's restaurant Aqua Terra for some much needed breakfast. When one of your bridesmaids is expecting you don't drag your feet about food so we had our behinds there bright and early to get us some chow. Unfortunately for us, the servers took forever to take our orders and even longer to come over and tell us they didn't have the bacon we'd ordered 45 minutes ago. I think we went through 2 or 3 hot chocolates each waiting for them to give us the bad news while watching some guests at the wedding be seated, eat, and leave. By the time we did get breakfast, we were late for our hair and make up appointments, the angry text messages had begun, and we had to wolf down our food and rush back to our rooms to get started. To add insult to injury, the boys sat down for lunch as we left and ordered bacon cheeseburgers! The nerve.

Best Man Josh getting primped. He got an unfortunate bowl cut before the wedding but Claudia worked wonders and made him look pretty hot

Me attempting to give directions to the hotel. My eyes are closed because I have no idea what I'm talking about and don't want to see the resulting disaster.

Once the hair and make up began things started going a bit more smoothly. Our awesome family friend/hairstylist Claudia of Oo La La Salon got everyone in and out of her chair in record time and everyone's do's looked fantastic. Somehow she knew exactly what style would best suit each person so each person's hair was both perfect and perfectly them. We had a simple twist, fun curly look, a fussy and elegant do and some slick styling. She even trimmed and styled all the guys who joined us after their bacon filled lunches, straightening unruly locks here and styling bangs there until everyone looked their best.

My girls and I getting beautified

After all the hair was complete, our next stop was make up which was done by two other family friends, Jessica and Samantha. Both ladies work/worked in the make up industry and did a fabulous job making us look beautiful and natural. They managed to make up me, my four ladies, two mamas, one grandma and touch up our two flower girls and junior bridesmaid in record time. There was a testy moment where I had to call my own mama to get her ass over to the hotel for make up and she shouted "Fuck You!" loud enough for the people in the room to hear. Unfortunately for her, she had given a cute little speech at my bridal shower about how she and I never fight and my mother in law practically had a cow laughing while listening to us argue. That was only the beginning of the wedding day epic mother-daughter failure which I admit I'm still holding a bit of a grudge about. To all future brides, watch out for momzillas. For me getting married was not the sweet moment of bonding with my mom anymore than dress shopping was and her mood did not improve as the wedding progressed.

My best man/man of honor, the hubby and I listening to best man's fake speech. It was a thing of beauty and involved an examination of the word friendship as both a friend and a ship. I really love this picture since it has the two most important men in my life and we're laughing our asses off as we usually do when we're together. 

After everyone was sufficiently pretty, and still running about an hour behind schedule, most of the guys headed over to the ranch and the girls and I followed shortly thereafter. While they got ready and had some photos snapped, bridesmaid M's fiance C (who was supposed to be getting ready with the other groomsmen) was frantically speeding us down the highway towards the ranch. At $350 per hour of overtime, I didn't want my lovely photographers standing around and we had no idea what we'd find at the ranch when we got there. We left the mom's and grandma at the hotel to get ready and crossed our fingers that they'd make it to the ranch in time to help me get dressed.