Getting ready for the Wedding!

Immediately after graduation was over, we finished packing Tori's apartment in Jackson and headed back to Joelton.  Focus was shifted now to the wedding!  I had taken the Friday before graduation thru the Monday after the wedding off from work.  The church was recently remodeled and didn't require much work at all.  This was a blessing.... But the family life center was a different story.  It is your classic family life center metal building.  Nothing pretty or elegant about it.  So we started off by hanging a chandelier from the ceiling.  Rod and I went up there on Monday night, by ourselves, and tried to get it hung.  It wasn't pretty, but it was hanging from the ceiling.  There were lots of laughs as he and I used teamwork to get the extension cord over to the wall to be plugged in.

In the meantime, Laine was working at her house on the backdrop for the photo booth.  Not saying Tori was optimistic on how much ribbon she bought... but I might have had to buy twice as much on amazon and have it delivered to Laine.  The end result sure is pretty!

The next day, I called in reinforcements.  One of my dearest friends, Bobbie, came to help.  She and I found a taller ladder and started to work...redoing what Rod and I had done the night before.  We got the chandelier cord hidden better and started hanging the 20 rolls of tulle across the ceiling.

Next came moving the pews and tables around.  This required Tina to call in her "muscles"... Peter came up to help move these heavy pews to the back.  Mom and Tori worked moving the chairs, the lattice and cleanup. Laine was helping to string lights along the top of the lattice and add bows.  Rod was around to bring us lunch.  He even said "I like these wedding projects, I never get to be the "go-for"... 

By Tuesday night we were starting to feel really good at how it was looking. 

Thursday brought the flower delivery.  We were still working in the family life center on the table clothes (they were sewed by my Aunt Sandra and needed to be ironed).  The family life center was fairly hot.  So, Laine took the flowers to the basement of the church...and for 2 days she didn't hardly come up for air.  She had to make 30 vases with flowers and then all the corsages, bouquets, and boutonnieres.  They were all beautiful! 

Friday night brought the wedding rehearsal (which was chaotic).  I don't know how I would get through life if I didn't have amazing friends.  Pam showed up on Friday to help with all the cooking that I was doing and to be the coordinator for the wedding.  She was flying by the seat of her pants on Friday night (having only been giving Tori's timeline 2 minutes before we started).  But in the end everything was done and we were ready for Saturday morning.

Saturday morning started with my Dad going to get 375 donuts!  Rod going to pickup 100 balloons, and crazy busy morning.  I got up at 4:30 to cook sausage rolls and get all the food to the church.  Just a few more hours and it would be wedding time.  I didn't know how it would all go, but I knew the crazy week was about to be over and Tori was becoming Mrs. King.  My last task before getting ready for the wedding was the cake... a little pressure to arrange the donuts into a cake on my first try just 1 1/2 hours before the start of the wedding... but I think it turned out just fine and tasted so very yummy!