Twas the Night Before My Wedding

Good morning, and I am back and a married woman! I really want to blog about the whole weekend, but I think I'm going to try to divide it into 4 posts: rehearsal dinner/welcome party, wedding day/ceremony, reception and day after the wedding/final thoughts. I am leaving for my honeymoon on Wednesday morning so I'd like to do them all before that but I also haven't packed yet so we shall see.

So...Friday was the day before the wedding. Caroline, Katie and I started the day with a nice trip to the spa :) After manicures and pedicures it was time to pack up and head to the area of the Cape the wedding was going to be (it's about a half an hour from my parents place).

The rehearsal went really well. I've never been to a rehearsal that wasn't at a church, but it still went smoothly even with a few different people in charge.

I posted a few pictures of the actual rehearsal on Saturday morning so I won't repeat :)

See my beautiful practice bouquet that Katie made me?

After the rehearsal we headed over the rehearsal dinner at Ocean House in Dennisport. Eric and I are basically in love with the food and the gorgeous view at the Ocean House :) Ocean House does not have a private room for functions, but we started the rehearsal dinner at 4 so that not too many other people would be in the restaurant. The dinner began with a slideshow created by one of my bridesmaids, and friends since 7th grade, Tiff. There was no place to display a slideshow, no projector etc so I know she did a ton of work to be able to make it happen. It was so fun to look at old pictures of me and Eric, and then pictures of us together. I really appreciate that Tiff did not give up on this project just because Ocean House did not have a single thing she needed haha. I also was impressed that I managed to have no idea about this project, I noticed Tiff running out of the rehearsal quickly but I assumed she was trying to go pick up her husband before dinner haha, wrong!

After the slideshow, Eric's dad welcomed everyone and then it was time for Katie's speech. Katie is my best friend and was the Matron of Honor. Her and Caroline made an amazing team and I was really excited to hear her speech at the rehearsal dinner. As expected, Katie made everyone cry, but her speech was the perfect mix of everything. Here were the highlights for me...

-She started talking about how the two of us don't have like one big moment where we realized what good friends were are, it's just the constant every day. This is really true. Every day Katie is there for me, even if I don't talk to her that day, I always know I could if I needed to.

-She told the story of the night we met Eric and said that I asked her when I was going to find the match for me, and then within 5 minutes I was dancing with Eric. This story is both awesome and a little bit embarrassing. I mean really, who has these type of conversations in a bar bathroom? obviously us! But it's okay- it was a weird transitional coming home from Australia, getting back into the BC life time and I clearly had a few drinks! I've always thought that meeting Eric that night was a crazy stroke of luck or fate (We were out for a friend's birthday that was supposed to be celebrated a week before but was cancelled due to a massive snow storm...how easily could we, or Eric and his friends have chosen a different place to go?), but I don't think I quite realized how crazy it all was.

-Katie read the Starfish poem...not sure if you guys know it, but here is a link to one version, pretty similar if not the same to the one Katie read. It's about the man who is throwing starfish back in the ocean and someone says you can't save all of them, and he says that's okay I'm making a difference for this one. She said that I throw her back in the ocean when she gets stuck, and Eric and I do that for each other (she didn't say this, but she does it for me of course, many many times!). THEN, she gave Eric and I are own starfish that were on the back of her chairs at her wedding. She also gave everyone at the rehearsal dinner starfish to remind them to throw us back in the ocean when we get stuck. Getting a little teary just writing this so let's break it up with a picture...

Or two :)

That's my brother Jake, me, my grandmother (Nana) and my sister Caroline.

After the rehearsal dinner, we headed over to one of the hotels for a big welcome party. We decided to do this since basically everyone at the wedding was an out of town guest and we didn't want our rehearsal dinner to be the exact same as our wedding haha. The welcome party was basically a BBQ under a tent, but boy is there a lot of work involved in a BBQ under a tent! Thanks Dad for managing this!

I have to admit that I was not a 100 % fan of the welcome party from the beginning because I want to sleep before the wedding, but it was actually good to see people the night before since, like everyone says, the wedding day itself goes by SO quickly.

Girl cousins on my dad's side:

College friends (not all, but many):

Our officiant was one of Eric's friends (more on this in the ceremony recap) and it was his 30th birthday on Friday so Eric's mom helped us get him a cake...

Haha, good thing he is not embarrassed easily :)

Around 10:30, we headed home to attempt to sleep, but obviously I didn't really :)

Friday was a big success and Saturday was even better. I'll be back later today with a wedding ceremony recap!

By the way, one of the awesome things on Friday/Saturday morning was reading all of the blog comments, twitter messages etc wishing me a Happy Wedding Day! Thank you all soooo much :)