Jonathan and Diana's Wedding- Friday, April 26

I took Friday off from work but it sure didn’t feel like a vacation day.  At 9 I drove over to the florist and picked up the flowers for 8 bouquets, 15 boutonnieres and 4 corsages.  I wasn’t sure how to time the work but when I saw how much of the car was filled up by flowers and greens I realized immediately that it would be better to get the bouquets finished before we left for Des Moines to cut down on what we had to bring with us. 

Umm, what am I supposed to do with all these flowers?

To add to the insanity, Ron realized the night before that he’d misplaced his wallet.  There were no unauthorized charges on the credit cards so we figured it really was just lost, but Friday morning he went over to the DMV with his passport and birth certificate and got another one before we set out for Des Moines.  It took forever to load the car and Ron said it smelled like a funeral parlor.

As we got closer to Des Moines, things started to look better and better,  With 8 bouquets put together and loosely wired, and 6 boutonnieres made, the remaining work looked manageable, especially since my sister had volunteered to help.  I got on USAirways’ site with trepidation to check the status of the flight carrying 2 siblings, their spouses and my parents, and found it was on-time.  What a miracle! Not only that- they’d given my brother 2 upgrades which he promptly let my parents use.  By the time we arrived, they’d set up their own “hospitality suite” and were visiting together.

I headed over to the rehearsal after a visit to the Fitness Center, to learn about the Unity candle part of the ceremony.

Ron and I were hosting the rehearsal dinner and as we added out-of-town family members and loved ones, the guest list swelled to over 60, plus about 10 children.  I had visited the place only once and had chosen the food from an on-line menu but it was just what I’d wanted- a pleasant, unstructured evening with kid-friendly food stations and a lot of visiting back and forth between tables as the families got to know each other. 

Ron told me later that the little kids had found that the sandwich wraps had been sliced into cross-sections held together by large toothpicks with colored frills at the ends, and they’d started taking the toothpicks out of the sandwiches on the tray to use as toys.  Kids will turn anything into toys!