Some of you may remember a day many moons ago when I started to talk about my wedding. You know, the one that was a mere six months ago? Well, here I am with the next installment. Hooray for you! If you're just tuning in you can read part one here and part two there.
So, I had lived through 10 days of wedding franticness. I might be sugarcoating the moment, but I think I kept it together pretty well. Until this day.
But I'll get to that.
We are now up to the day before the wedding, also known as decoration/rehearsal day.
I woke up a bit late but made it to the church mostly on time. My Fern was there (everyone needs a Fern. she is amazing. she is the only reason 1. i was able to pull together a wedding in 45 days 2. i didn't lose my mind 3. i didn't have more questions on my wedding night ... if you know what i mean *wink wink*) as was my awesome sister-in-law to be, Katie, who was SO great at getting me things from the city when I was stuck in the country.
This is Fern (and me too of course!)
Fern and her husband (who happened to be the pastor who married us) had pulled into Fergus the night before, bringing with them most of the wedding stuff. We got to work unloading the suburban and setting things up.
Now, if anyone knows me you know that decisions are not my strong suit. And if you're married you know that a wedding is all about decisions about THE MOST MUNDANE DETAILS. Do you want this straight or kitty-corner? Do you want lines or squiggles? Do you want white or off-white?
I don't care! I just want to be married! But I want it to be beautiful, perfect and wonderful and you can bet your boots I'm going to cry if I don't get what I want! Even if I don't let you know what I want.
Man I was a peach to work with. That just makes Fern all that more of a saint.
Anyways, we spent the morning/afternoon setting up tables, deciding how things should look, deciding what the front altar should look like. Everyone was incredibly helpful and nice to me, which is awesome! However, it was still decisions. Finally my mother told Luke to get me out of there and take me home so we could pack.
We didn't argue too hard and headed back to my parents farm (which was only 3 miles from the church, which was nice!).
We worked on gathering up all of our stuff that had gotten spread out over the past 10 days and packing what we wanted to take with on our honeymoon (which I still didn't know the details of) into two suitcases while putting everything else in the car to take back to MT with us (more decisions! hooray!).
Soon Luke got a phone call from our friend Dave, who was one of the ushers (sidenote : I give Dave the credit for bringing us together. he and Luke were good friends from Bible school and I got to know Dave and his sweet wife Lydianne when they worked at camp my first summer. Dave is the one who brought Luke to TER for family camp two years before and is the one who convinced him to come back as a counselor.).
Anyways, I could hear that it was Dave on the phone. He, Lydianne and their ADORABLE child Eli were driving in from MT that day and we had asked them to do us a favor as they came through Fargo. So, when he called I figured it was just to let Luke know they had made it. But then I heard him ask Luke if he was alone and then when he found out I was in the room with Luke told him to go somewhere private.
Curious.
So, I kept rolling and tucking clothes into the suitcase and waited for Luke to come back. Soon enough he came back into the room with a serious look on his face and told me he had some bad news. You see, the errand we had asked them to do was to pick up my wedding ring from Zales in Fargo. I had taken it in the week before to get soldered and they assured me it would be back in time.
It wasn't.
Instead it was sitting at the FedEx building in Fargo. Apparently FedEx wasn't running that day (it was Jan 1st), but Zales didn't know (or so they said). So, when the Jurica's went to pick it up, it wasn't there. Zales and FedEx spent time pointing fingers at one another and ultimately told them there was nothing they could do. The ring was sitting on one of the trucks and there was no way of knowing which truck it was on (I'm going to tell you the truth and say that 6 months later it still gets me a little worked up to talk about ... the customer service was horrible!).
Anyways, Dave & Lydianne totally went to bat for us and did everything they could. The best Zales could offer was a loaner ring that looked identical to mine. Dave had to sign it out and insure that he would get it back to them, which he was willing to do. The only problem was the ring was a size 7 (or so) and I wear a 5 (or smaller. I'm actually not sure of my ring size because we have to keep resizing my ring because it's too big), but they put a sizer in there so it would stay on my finger.
When Luke told me I took it pretty well. I knew Juricas had done everything they could and it was Zales fault (I was a little upset with them). I didn't even cry.
That is until I walked into our rehearsal (late) and saw everyone and they started asking me how I was. Then I lost it. In a big way. And had to run into the bathroom to cry. After a little pity party I pulled myself together (with a lot of help from my girls!) and went back to the rehearsal. Everyone was really great and my pastor was really good about diffusing the situation with a little humor.
So, we rehearsed and got everything figured out (it took a little bit because we hadn't been able to have our last session with Tim & Fern where we finalized everything in the ceremony because of the snowstorm that brought us home early). After that we ate and hung out before the party broke up.
Luke was heading out for his "thunderstorm" (women have showers ... men have thunderstorms)/bachelor party, so we said our goodbyes before his groomsmen confiscated his phone and hurried him off. There were still some things to do at the church, but Fern, Katie and my mother-in-law took care of that while I went home to finish packing and just decompress.
Soon enough I was tucked into bed and slipping off into dreamland on my last night as a Nelson.
Up next: the wedding day!
I leave you with the only pictures I have from that day:
{lovely veil no? bethany (on the far left) made it for rondi's wedding (just to the left of me) 5 (5!!) years ago.
we didn't use it for bethy's wedding but it ended up in MT with me and then I brought it back for this.
we will definitely be breaking it out for karla's wedding in august!
it's a little smushed and missing some flowers, but it's ours.}
{These are my girls. We've been together since jr high/early high school (as in the first day of 9th grade early). We have fought, laughed, stayed up all night, cried, celebrated, shopped, eaten so much junk food we've gotten sick, spent countless hours watching Gilmore Girls and Coyote Ugly, talked about boys, memorized the Perkins menu, celebrated 3 weddings (the 4th is only a month away!!), and welcomed 4 kiddos into our circle. We're all spread out and we don't talk as much as we should, but they will always be my Cronies.}
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