Miller Time: The Rehearsal

Want to catch up? Before this, we ran last minute errands.

The rehearsal was scheduled for 2:30 on Friday. This was supposed to give us plenty of time to get our errands done in the morning, rehearse before Volo had to set up for dinner service, then get back to the hotel to rest and change before the rehearsal dinner. Because Volo is a pretty nontraditional space to have a ceremony, we wanted to honor that and not do the whole big processional. Just Neill's two best man, my two ladies, and us. No ushers. No flower girls. No Grandparents. No parents. Just us. To be honest, this was in part because I just wanted to keep it simple and stress-free. People come. People sit down. I didn't want to have to orchestrate some huge processional in our little tiny courtyard. It just didn't fit. So anyways - this meant that the only people at the rehearsal were the bridal party (all four of them), neill, myself, our wedding coordinator, and Volo's event coordinator. Great. This should be easy . . . right?

bhahahaha how naive I was.

First thing upon arrival, Morgan (one of the wedding coordinators) informs me that Kathleen (the other wedding coordinator, not present) has the flu and will not be able to work our wedding. Gulp. This whole process we have always met with both of them and each one was going to do specific tasks the day of the wedding. For example, it was going to be Kathleen who accompanied us during pictures to keep us on time and transport the huge balloons. The fact that we were down a man worried me juuuust a little. Morgan did a wonderful job assuring me that things would be just fine, but I swear I saw a little fear in her eyes!

Plus - and I'm an awful person for saying this and I really really really love Morgan and Kathleen buuuuuut - I sort of don't believe the whole flu story. I have absolutely no reason to believe that they would lie. They were not flaky one bit throughout planning, but Kathleen had just gotten married two weeks prior and I just had this little inkling that maybe she was away on her honeymoon or just holed up with her new hubby and refusing to come out. Anyways - I don't begrudge her one bit. I'm just glad that Morgan was around! She always struck me as the more "let's get down to business" one of the duo anyhow.

After that hurdle, we had to unload all of the stuff. What stuff you ask? Every little detail that went into our wedding. Bird figurines, decorative stones, signs, gust book, pens, mason jars, little blue eggs, a card box, a cake topper, a cake stand (that ended up being too small - whoops!), the favors, lanterns, the ketubah, the easel for the ketubah, and the mamma of all things - the huppah! It was a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff that would later have to be repacked up and transported home.

Then, we tackled the huppah. Namely - where it would go. During our two walk throughs at Volo we had always talked with the owner rather vaguely about the huppah going "over there", while pointing to a pretty corner of the courtyard. The idea was that we'd angle the huppah so that the most number of people could get a good view. But, when we actually had the huppah in position it was clear that this plan was not going to work out. The corner was just too small! Can you hear the bridal meltdown brewing? I felt a bit mislead by the people at Volo who had given us the impression they had done this a million times, but I was most upset that our bridal party wouldn't be able to stand up with us during the ceremony. I had always pictured each one of them standing by a huppah pole, symbolically holding the huppah up. But, there was just no way that all four of them would be able to fit.

The images in my head, from a practical wedding

This is when bridal meltdown #2 started. I was hot and sweaty. I was being told that there was just no way that my two best friends in the whole world could stand with me on my wedding day and I just couldn't hold back the tears. Through the whole planning process I always imagined having them right next me. I didn't expect to have to make that compromise. So I cried. And sulked. And then gave up. I remember excusing myself to try and pull myself together and Grace came to help me out. She asked me what I really wanted. I could tell that if I told her that I wanted her up there with me, she would have fought with the coordinators to make that happen. But, I just didn't have the energy. Writing this now, it still makes me a little sad. I wish I hadn't just trusted that everything would fit. I wish I had taken the time to measure the space. I wish that I had  just a bit more energy to invest in trying out different huppah arrangements that day. But, I think mainly I have these wishes because on the actual day of our wedding the huppah ended up getting set up in a less than ideal way. We'll talk about that later, though.

During the rehearsal we also figured out how to work our ipod with Volo's sound system and coordinated with Morgan on when to play our before ceremony mix and the processional song. Neill also tested out some angels for his flip cams, which he used to film the ceremony. By this time, however, I was already stressed out and angry and so I'm pretty sure I said more than one but less than ten mean things to him. Sorry, hunny!

Our rehearsal ended up running late and we didn't get out of there till around 4. It could have been worse - but with all of the different things we had to do it was pretty overwhelming. Unfortunately, after that I still had one more errand to run - I had to pick up the cupcakes for the rehearsal dinner. Why oh why didn't I ask someone else to do this? Who knows. I thought it would be no big deal. But when I was standing in the slowest moving line ever at the Alliance Bakery that had NO air conditioning and all I wanted to do was scream at the top of my lungs IM GETTING MARRIED TOMORROW GIVE ME MY MOTHERFUCKING CUPCAKES SO I CAN GET OUT OF THIS MOTHERFUCKING  PLACE AND GET THE MOTHERFUCKING SHOW ON THE ROAD it started to seem like a big deal. 

Thankfully, I had (what was supposed to be) a fun night ahead of me! Check back to read about the rehearsal dinner.