Wedding Wednesday: Blooper Edition

Our wedding was awesome, and not to sound cliche, but it was seriously the best day of our lives. But even a wonderful wedding that you planned for 17 months won't go off without a hiccup or two. So I thought I'd share some bloopers, disasters, blunders, debacles, hiccups, or whatever you want to call them, to show that even though some things will happen that are out of your control, you will still remember the day as perfect.

I'll start off small, with something I mentioned in my Getting Ready post. Notice how the groomsmen aren't wearing suspenders? Well they were supposed to be but they couldn't because their pants were all missing inside buttons to attach the suspenders, even though Mens Wearhouse was supposed to have done those alterations. I found this out about one hour before the wedding was supposed to start, but I was SO calm on the wedding day (Brian asked if they drugged me haha) because I was just so darn happy to be getting married, that I just shrugged and said "oh well!" My sister frantically tried to sew the buttons into everyone's pants, but 1 person times 6 buttons times 4 pairs of pants is just way too many buttons to sew in 1 hour, I will also mention that they gave a groomsmen the wrong pants which we luckily realized two days before the wedding, and if you look closely, one of our groomsmen (I won't tell you which one) even has a slightly different tie and I didn't even notice that until Brian mentioned it to me like a week later when I was looking at pictures online! Oh, and if you look, all the groomsmen and the groom must have thought it was appropriate to keep their wallets/phones bulging in their front pockets *face palm*

We specifically used Mens Wearhouse because they are supposed to be (key words- supposed to be) super organized with group numbers and making sure people all over the country receive the same clothes that we painstakingly picked out in the store (our groomsmen were from New York, New Jersey, and Colorado, so we didn't see their clothes until the wedding weekend). But honestly. the groomsmen looked great regardless and no one even knew that they were supposed to be wearing suspenders, so it all turned out fine.

Another hiccup that could have been wayyyy worse than it was the fact that my dress ripped. Yup, the seamstress I chose that had wonderful reviews moved the back panel on my dress over and only sewed it on with one row of stitches (!!), so when my mom and one of my bridesmaids tugged it gently, it tore! Luckily they finagled it so you couldn't even notice when it was all said and done and they didn't even tell me until the dress was all laced up so no one was any the wiser!

Let's talk about the weather that day (I know I've talked about it before but in a bloopers post it needs to be mentioned). Our ceremony was outside and it was COLD! We expected it to be in the 50s, but it was in the low 40s and with the wind whipping around like it does in south-central Pennsylvania, it felt like it was in the 30s. We provided blankets and most people knew it was going to be cold so they wore their winter coats, but man oh man my bridesmaids and I in sleeveless dresses were ice cubes. The wind whipped one of the two doors shut to the chapel where we were standing, so that's why it's shut in many of our pictures. One of our lovely photographers tried to re-open it, but the wind in PA is not to be messed with, it just immediately slammed back shut.

We also don't have as many posed/formal pictures as I would have liked, because it was that cold, and no one could stand out there any longer. My sisters ran away after just a few pics, and eventually even Brian and I had to throw in the towel and go inside, get warm, and have some appetizers. Again though, things could have been MUCH, much worse, as it actually snowed the next day, and it drizzled rain that morning and even 30 minutes before the ceremony started, so we were very fortunate to have dry skies. Our pictures are beautiful and honestly, how many posed pictures do we really need anyways?

Oh, and we definitely have our share of awkward photos. For example, look at my arm in that group photo. Why did I think that was appropriate? It's also hard to know what to do with your hands when all eyes and cameras are on you, so Brian and I have lots of pictures from friends and family like the one above where we are doing weird things with our hands. I love it though, because it's so us.

The beautiful front entrance to our ceremony/reception site- I don't have any pictures of our limo/shuttle

The biggest almost-disaster involved our transportation. You may want to skim past this paragraph if you are soon-to-be married because if I was about to get married soon I don't know if I'd want to know about this particular debacle. Background: a year, yes a year, before the wedding, we went to a local golf resort with Brian's parents to discuss having many of our events there/using many of their services. We blocked off almost all the rooms in the hotel for our guests for that weekend, we booked our rehearsal dinner, Sunday brunch, and Groom's golf outing at their resort, and we scheduled limo and shuttle services through them.

The transportation services were especially important to us, given that almost every single one of our guests was staying at the hotel and everyone needed safe, reliable transportation to, and especially from, the wedding. We mailed the shuttle schedule to everyone with our invitations, wrote it on our wedding website, and met with the event coordinator again three weeks before the wedding to make sure that everything was set up, and we reiterated how important transportation was to us.

The day of the wedding, the guests were all in the lobby at the appropriate times (yay guests), but apparently the shuttle had broken down the NIGHT BEFORE and NO ONE at the resort thought it was necessary to tell me, Brian, or our parents. Nope, Brian's mom found out when she was already at our wedding location and people rolled up in a 12 person VAN, yes a van (with the rude driver's "friend" hogging up 2 seats and eating chips the entire time), and she called to find out what the crap was going on. Why the hotel thought it was appropriate to send a van instead of a 36 person shuttle and not even tell us was beyond me, but they did. His mom was furious and told them they need to keep the limo running too because there was no way that everyone was going to end up getting to the wedding on time if only a van holding 10 guests was running, when we expected a 36 person shuttle.

This all happened unbeknownst to me until about 5 minutes before the ceremony was about the start, and the only reason they told me was because we ended up having to start the wedding 10-15 minutes late because of the whole debacle. It was so ridiculous and was not supposed to happen that way because we specifically planned for transportation.

But there's more. By the end of the night they still hadn't fixed their huge mistake, and it got so late after everyone left that Brian, his parents, and I (my parents took all of our gifts to their home in their car) ended up riding in some nasty, crumb-filled Uber back to the hotel. Our guests got to ride in limos (and that van) and the bride rode in some guys dirty Dodge Durango! Apparently I was super chill about it though and I was still on such a wedding high that I didn't even care, but Brian's parents definitely got their money back for the whole fiasco!!

All in all, our wedding turned out wonderfully and was so much fun (see Getting Ready, Ceremony, Reception Part 1, Reception Part 2), and no one even noticed any of these mostly minor things! I hope I didn't scare any brides-to-be, I was actually trying to make a point that even if bloopers happen, which they will no matter how organized you are, at the end of the day, you're still married and you will remember the day as the best day ever and want to do it all again, EXACTLY THE SAME, debacles and all, I promise!!