Good
The room that the resort gave us to set up was AMAZING! It was a huge room, they gave us an awesome breakfast spread of coffees, juices, teas (like 10 different kinds), the whole bit. It had couches for people to lounge on, and a tv for us to play cartoons for the kids (have to think of these things with 5 flower girls!!!). There was no mirror in the main room, only the ensuite bathroom, so they brought us in a full length mirror to use.
I had the most amazing wedding coordinator ever! I know I’ve talked on here before about how much I adore Nicole and everything she did for me, but she REALLY stepped up the day of! We ended up having to go with the rain plan, but it was GORGEOUS inside the boathouse and you’d never know it wasn’t the original plan when everything was worked out! She set up the whole reception, I just stopped in for a few moments to answer any questions she had about where stuff went, and it looked breath taking!
We had to do fittings right up to the morning of to get my dress to fit right, but I got to wear my mother’s dress on my wedding day and it looked GORGEOUS! When I look at pictures of me in it, its hard to believe it’s the same dress that she wore in the 80s! LOL I got SO many compliments from friends and family on the dress, and the best compliments were from the family members who eventually recognized it and had seen Mom wear it originally! My favourite reaction though was my mother’s when I stepped out wearing it. We specifically didn’t let her help me put it on so we could get her reaction with the photographer when I stepped out wearing it.
All the kids made it down the aisle! One was in a bit of a mood and crying for part of the ceremony, not sure why, no one ever explained it (one of the flower girls) but they actually all made it down the aisle! I have only seen a couple pictures, but they looked SO cute coming down the aisle in their groups… we even managed to get all 7 kids (5 flower girls and 2 ring bearers) together in a picture with DH & I thanks to the patience of our photographers at the time!
I got to use my umbrella and my gum boots! For those that don’t know the story behind the gum boots, I was on a mission for awhile to find red rain boots. Apparently in this area that’s actually a challenge…. A friend ended up sending me Gummies all the way from New Zealand for the wedding day! With the weather the way it was I totally rocked them for awhile during our photos and can’t wait to see the pictures
I am SO happy I signed up to be part of the Knottie Knot! At one point when we learned people were going to be later arriving and stuff like that I was a little stressed, but I pulled out the KK and started reading through the postcards and it was like everything else just melted away. I was surround by the love and kind words of all the amazing ladies that had the KK before me and adored having them as a ‘part of my day’! (I did forget the postcards but my brother is going to mail them to me so I’ll have them in time to send it on lol)
DH got really emotional during our vows and fumbled every line of them. It was so sweet and adorable. I worried I didn’t get it on camera given the whole mishap with the wedit cameras (see under Bad) but SIL let me k now she videotaped it from her seat with the kids. You can hear the kids the whole time, but that’s ok as long as I have a video where I can hear him saying the vows
Our food was AMAZING! People are still talking about how awesome it was and how much they enjoyed it! The party itself was pretty awesome too, lasted into the early morning hours and although we planned on sneaking out early, we stayed for the whole thing lol.
Bad
We had to move our ceremony location. The rest of the whole rain thing was fine, I had fun taking the photos, but I was sad to lose the ceremony location. It wasn’t the end of the world (hence this being under bad instead of ugly) but it did kinda suck lol!
I paid for the Wedit camera service. Essentially what they do is send you 5 digital video cameras, you send them back after the wedding and they edit up any footage on it… well we forgot them in our bridal suite where we were getting ready so they were never used and sent back blank. Boo to losing $200 on nothing! Lol
The evening of our rehearsal dinner was almost 2 hours later than planned. We were just doing a simple catered pizza/beer type evening. Well they waited until that night to inform us that due to the size of their kitchen it was going to take longer to make everything than planned. We did barter though and got free delivery on it so we all went to the cottage that DH’s family was renting and hung out there together while we waited.
I forgot a box of stuff at home when we went to our location SO we had no programs, no draping for the head table and something else (I honestly don’t even remember I just remember it was 3 things lol). The program part kinda sucked because I spent a lot of time making them, but the draping for the head table didn’t make a difference at all because I had an AMAZING wedding coordinator who immediately stepped in and created something with the linens they had and extra rose petals and it looked gorgeous without the black draping!
Due to other things that wedding party were doing prior to meeting at the suite (I had 2 bridesmaids setting up the cake because one of them made it as our wedding gift for example, and my man of honour was late because he had to wait to be able to check into his bed & breakfast down the road) we ended up being late starting the ceremony. This means we cut into our picture time quite a bit and didn’t get some of the pictures I was hoping to get. Our photographers did come up with an awesome idea in the dark during the reception using Christmas lights so we snuck off for like 15-20 min and did that, and I can’t wait to see the pictures!
Ugly
There was some drama with vendors that I’m not going to get into too much on here, those that know me better know what went on. It started before getting there and escalated while there, but we’re blessed to have an amazing family that stepped in and took care of it without letting it stress either of us out (infact I found out after they’d already started the process of solving the situation).