Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Miller Time: Last Minute Errands

The Friday before the wedding was a strange mix of excitement, disbelief, and stress. On one hand, I was completely excited that our wedding was coming up SO SOON but, on the other hand, I was still worried about a few things. What was on my mind? I was nervous about the weather. As I mentioned previously (here and here), the forecast was not looking good. Every weather site I checked predicted thunderstorms, humidity, and temperatures in the mid 90s. The last thing I wanted was be a sweaty rained on mess on my wedding day!

Anyhoo, Friday started out bright and early. I had started packing for the wedding weekend on Wednesday and so by Friday morning I was all ready to go. My maid of honor, Grace, picked me up around 9:30 and I loaded my wedding dress, veil, clothes for the brunch and rehearsal dinner,  jewelry, shoes, toiletries, snacks, and lots of umbrellas into the car. We drove to the Allerton Hotel to check in and drop everything off. We wanted to get there early because the Blackhawks were set to have a parade only a few blocks away from our hotel to celebrate their Stanley Cup win just a few hours later. While I was excited that Chicago won, I was worried that all the added people downtown would put a serious kink in our plans! I mean really - who wants to get stuck in that traffic?

 look at that crowd!

While I had previously cleared it with the Allerton that I would check in early, when we got there the front desk informed me that it would not be possible. In fact, according to them - someone was currently staying in my room. Cue bridal meltdown number one of the day. What did she mean I couldn't check in? I just confirmed it! No I cannot wait. And NO I don't want to leave you with my wedding dress to keep behind the desk until the room is ready. I was seriously about to lose it. The tears were coming. I had to walk away from the desk and speak loudly about how incompetent the staff were. I have to add, that the lady giving me all this grief was named Princess. For some reason, this made me even angrier. Thankfully, before things came to blows (and they would have come to blows. Although I bet Princess fights dirty) my amazing contact at the Allerton appeared and the situation was quickly remedied.

Once I saw the size of my room, I figured that the few moments are stress were totally worth it! The room was huge! When you walked in there was a large sitting area with couches. Then, through a door was a bedroom and bathroom. They really hooked me up!

After dropping everything off in the bridal suite, we headed to Party City to get my balloons blown up. Since catching a few pictures of the big round balloon around the wedding blogosphere, I knew I wanted to use them as props in our photos.


What I didn't quite realize was just how big a 36 inch balloon is relative to the space in a car. Ooops! Thankfully, the day before my wedding coordinators, Luxe Events, had suggested I come up with a good plan on how to transport those babies. We fit some of the balloons in my maid of honor's car and the rest went into my bridesmaid's car. If those two ladies hadn't been willing to drive around with their back window completely filled with balloons, I don't know what I would have done!

At this point, the awful traffic we were expecting never materialized (wedding miracle #1) and so we had time to stop at my maid of honor's house and lounge for a bit. It was nice to just be able to relax :) After the quick stop, we headed over to get our nails done. Erica and Miriam met us there too! I got talked into trying a no-chip manicure, which I would seriously recommend! I was very skeptical, but it did last for quite a long time and it was worth the extra ten bucks.

After our nails dried, it was time to run over to Volo for our 2:30 rehearsal. Check back soon to read about bridal meltdown #2 and the actual rehearsal dinner!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh no, i had no idea princess was telling you that you couldn't check into the room! she was the same person that was telling my family, who was trying to check into the hotel after the normal check-in time, that there were NO reservations made for the miller-oscharoff wedding. NONE. nevermind that we had gotten the confirmation of all the rooms in e-mail days before-hand. of course, sheila came by to fix things, but princess sure did ruin it for everyone for a tense 15 minutes or so.

Married In Chicago said...

ha! really? that princess. i think she just secretly enjoyed messing with people!