FIrst thing's first; my wedding day was October 4th 2014, 6 days ago. I have done nothing but cry and feel angry about it since then. First off, I wasn't able to have the day I wanted (the 5th, rather than the 4th). Second, my day happened to be the first so far this year below 60 degrees, and also happened to be the day that broke the local drought, with what the weatherman (whom I would love to smack for his terminology) called a "much needed, saturating rain". Friday was beautiful, Sunday was gorgeous! And Saturday was 40, rainy and absolutely miserable. Then 3rd, nothing, and I mean NOTHING went right. I spent 5 months (it seems like a short period of time, but I'm a stay at home mom) putting every available moment I had into planning, and designing my perfect wedding. I had the perfect dress, rings, party attire, table settings, tableware, flowers, centerpieces - everything.
Then is comes down to the day before the wedding. In a rush, I got my nails done, spoke to DH's aunt who is a cosmetologist who was doing my hair the next morning - and finalized with her, didn't meet with the officiant bc he said "we didn't need to". Rode an hour to pick up my fiance, then went an hour back to our "rehearsal" (for which we were almost an hour late). The plan being; I was getting married in a pavilion at a state park - at noon. The night before, we were supposed to arrange the tables (they were already there), and do simple things like; clean the tables, put down the runners... That's really it - doesn't seem like much right? Well, we get there, it's full dark, 2 out of 3 of the grooms party that were there were drunk and "weren't moving any effing tables, don't even effing think about it!", so we decided to meet early on the morning of to do "all of that".
Fast forward to "D-day" (this is not intended to be a bad thing, my fiance and I lovingly referred to our day as D-day from the beginning). I wake up at 6:30 am; half an hour earlier than I had to, to shower, drink coffee and wait to get my hair done. About 7:30 I sit down, and get my hair done - this takes maybe half an hour? And it was perfect. Now, I did not get dressed in my dress. I was supposed to then immediately go to the pavilion to set up and do all the things that weren't done the night before - this is 9 am or so.
No one else (besides my party) were up, or ready to go anywhere or do anything. SO I have to wait until 11:30 to even leave to make the 20 minute drive to the site - watching the hours tick by, and having waves of nausea, and panic the entire time. "My ceremony is supposed to start in __ minutes and no one's even there, nothing is set up or done!" - every 5 minutes or so. Meanwhile - it started raining at around 5 that morning and it was POURING.
I finally get there at about 10 minutes to noon, and about half of my family, and my party and a few guests are there running around like crazy in a desperate attempt to get SOMETHING at least HALF-WAY set up, and decent. To absolutely no avail. The centerpieces I slaved and agonized over planning and creating for FOUR MONTHS - never got set up. My memorial table for my grandmother and son - was never set up. Head table - never even SAT at, none the less set up. My candy buffet which my fiance and I argued over selecting the right candy for, for over a month, was a soggy disaster. I had no aisle. My cake was NOTHING like it was supposed to be, I couldn't even put the topper on it! And! It was at least twice what it was actually worth! Everyone is yelling and screaming at me to do this or how do I do that, and get dressed! Omg, and the only bathrooms within a 10 minute drive were OUT OF ORDER that morning - we were supposed to get port-a-potty's and NEVER did. My 2y/o dd's dress was hand made and I never even laid eyes on it, or my veil until about 10 minutes before I walked. And she did NOT want to cooperate; fought to get dressed, then kept wiggling out if it - and even refused to walk! Which we'd practiced for over a month!
Then the fun stuff. No one will listen as I finally say eff it - this is a disaster, but I am getting married damn it. So it takes 20 minutes just to line up the parties to walk. Again, I have no aisle, since we were flooded in, and no room at the head of said imaginary aisle, so everyone was crowded. And if you remember, as I said we had no rehearsal, and never met with the officiant bc "we didn't need to". So everyone is confused and just everywhere, then starts the damned ceremony. First off, we wrote our own vows, and were not supposed to have a reading of any sort, since we wanted a totally non-religious, non-denominational ceremony, and the officiant starts reading a FOUR PAGE SERMON - the groom, and his party are yawning, rolling their eyes and hysterically laughing the entire time. Oh, and I almost forgot the BEST part. The officiant didn't even have my DH's name right! First he had the first name "Dom"; right and last name wrong, "A***s" instead of "A***i". So amongst everyone laughing like hyenas, I'm mortified and try to correct him, and instead, he switches to "Dommy A***s" - which a lot of people are still joking about - but I was so upset, I almost broke down crying, and want to everytime someone brings it up.
So finally, we get through that disaster and onto the reception. As I said, it was about 40F - raining and miserable. SO everyone is in light, comfy clothes (I shopped in July and August - there was nothing else) and FREEZING - at least half of us ended up sick. The majority of our guests and party had to leave within half an hour bc it was just too cold and wet. I had my first dance with my pretty hair, awful cried through make-up in a flannel shirt and jeans with wool socks. I didn't get professional pictures bc it just wasn't in the budget. Half of them are too dark, I look miserable and fat and again - cried through make-up is always fantastic. Especially next to my ridiculously photogenic family and in-laws...
No one even got my daddy-daughter dance on video for me, or my DH's mother-son dance. And my garters that I took so much time picking just the right ones, we didn't really get to do the garter toss. There was no song, no fun - he reached up, took it off under my dirty, soaking wet dress, and kinda flung it to no one standing behind him. I then tossed my bouquet to my sisters and my daughter. Then a couple people had a couple beers - a few family members got so wasted that there was even more drama after the wedding.
Then we went back to my in-laws house, and fell asleep, with our DD in between us about 9pm.
I hated my wedding. I hate everything about it. I don't look back on any of it with fondness, I want to scream and cry. Everyone keeps saying "well, you got married, that's the important part, right!?" No. Not right at all. We have been together for 5 and a half years. We were practically already married - nothing changed that day or since, other than my last name. This was supposed to be a day to celebrate, have the party we wanted and planned - and it was a disaster.
I think for our "anniversary" the date we started dating; June 5th - I want to plan just a reception re-do. And I don't want anyone to criticize me for it. I had my "real" wedding - it was "really" awful. And I will keep all my decorations (thank god I decided to go with fake flowers) and do my re-do reception the way the original was supposed to be. I didn't write this post for advice, or anything like that - I'm sorry. But I desperately needed to get it all off my chest. Thank you to anyone who reads through my horror story lol.