Setting up the wedding ourselves

Setting Up Our Wedding Ourselves

Tired Gigi having breakfast with Bubbs

The key to calmness for a micromanaging party planner is to keep repeating to yourself, "There's nothing left for me to do. It's all in the hands of my coordinator. I did my job, my binder's complete. Stick to the schedule."

This went through my head all day, and it worked. I was cool as a cucumber. Okay - I snapped once. But that's not bad.

The morning of the wedding, I woke up exhausted. Since we arrived at Leonard Lake, I hadn’t slept. I kept going over all the work that had to be done. I wasn’t stressing out during the day, but it all crept up when I was supposed to be sleeping.

Cousins making pankcakes

Some of our amazing cousins planned a breakfast for all 60 overnight guests, so when I woke up, I took a shower, got dressed and headed down to the big house.

An amazing fruit salad

We had rented a 100 person coffee pot and I brought my favorite STRONG coffee so I started the pot while everyone else milled around.

My brother in law and my husband doing some morning yoga (you have no idea how rare it is for my brother in law to do yoga).

I drank my coffee and tried to zen out since I knew the rest of the day would be insane.

I brought out my “binder” and it started getting passed around. People were teasing me, but my 20 page, sheet protected binder was VERY helpful. If anything, it could have had more detail in it.

I had written out a detailed schedule for the day, so at 11am exactly, I grabbed my “décor” team and we went to go set up the tables.

Originally, I had asked four people to help set up the tables, another five to set up the reception, and three to set up the ceremony. The reality was that just about everyone who was there helped set up in some way – and we needed them!

I had hired a friend of the family to come help coordinate the day of. I have a lot of type A family members and I wanted one point person. I also didn’t want to micromanage set up – which I knew I would probably end up doing. I told her that if anyone had questions they should go to her, and if she didn’t know the answer, to make it up.

At around noon, I made my husband to be a plate of cheese and fruit and delivered it to him as he was running behind schedule and hadn’t eaten. I went down to my sister and my best friend’s cabin and they were having ribs and a cheese plate. I snuck in on that action. My best friend's husband is a well established chef (a michelin star and four stars in the LA times) and LOVES to feed people. Another friend was having noon bloody mary’s outside their rented RV, and I took them up on that offer as well.

After doing one last run around through the site, it looked like things were coming together. My mom and my aunt both came up to me as I was doing my last look over and asked where I wanted certain candles. I remember just looking at them both kind of stupefied and thinking to myself “as if I care about stupid candles right now.”

I told them that I wasn’t answering questions anymore and they should ask Lisa, the coordinator. My cousin Stephanie was also taking charge in an amazing way.

I finally just walked away – I decided that rather than getting dressed by myself, as planned, I would get dressed with my sister and friend in their cabin.

Up next: Getting Ready with a Tired Two Year Old