Our Wedding: Wedding Week

Now that we have all our wedding photos back, I'm ready to start to my series of wedding recap posts! I thought I'd start off with the lead up to the big day!

Fortunately, I have a very generous vacation package so I was able to take off most of the week of our wedding. Phil gets less vacation time so he worked up until the day before the wedding. I worked on Monday and was off for the rest of the week! My first day off was fairly low key.  I had some errands to run and details to finalize but I didn't have a ton to do (well, besides obsessively checking the weather). Our wedding week was extremely rainy and the forecast flipped back and forth between saying it would or wouldn't rain. While our wedding wasn't outdoors, I wanted all of our pictures to be taken outdoors since we were getting married in such a pretty area of Minneapolis.

It rained every day that week, except our wedding day. I was feeling pretty stir crazy, though, so I didn't let the rain prevent me from getting a run in on Tuesday morning. I did end up getting poured on during this run but I didn't mind and it was my fastest run this spring, and I have yet to run that kind of pace (8:40ish) since that day!

One good thing about ALL the rain is that everything looked so lush and green!

I got through my to-do's pretty quickly so had enough time to make roasted chicken and veggies!  On Tuesday I remember thinking that wedding week was going to be a cinch!  I was so naive - little did I know that Wednesday and Thursday were going to be a little stressful/jam-packed!

That 'I've got this' vibe dissipated pretty quickly on Wednesday, which was a totally over-scheduled day. The day started off great with breakfast with my friend Courtney and her 18 month old, followed by my final dress appointment where Courtney learned the complicated bustle process. After that, I headed downtown to drop off all the hotel bags and get my brows waxed.

There was one snafu that I tried to deal with that day. I had put my garden in the previous Saturday and despite the fact that I wore sunscreen, I got tan lines from the tank top I wore.  Womp womp. I thought they were fine and would fade but my alterations lady said I really should get them taken care of by getting a spray tan.  So I made an appointment for the late afternoon but when I got there, the woman decided it was best to not get a spray tan because I got a very slight sunburn along the edges of the tank top and if you have burned your skin at all, there's a risk that you will peel after the spray tan, which will look even worse.  So I decided to just deal with having tan lines. Luckily I had a veil so it wasn't very noticeable during the ceremony which was the only part of the day when people were really focusing on my back!!

After that debacle, Phil and I headed to pick up Amber at the airport and then we took her to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner. Phil and Amber hadn't met but had heard a lot about each other so it was great that they had a chance to get to know each other! After dinner we headed to pick up Kyria at the airport!

Reunited and it feels so good! And yes, I'm the only one in pajamas in this photo. Ha.

I am so glad that I got some extra time with these two ladies and they got a chance to see where we live! Phil had met Kyria before as she was our host/tour guide when we went to San Francisco last April. They are clearly 'old friends' in Phil's mind because when we walked in the door, Phil asked Kyria if she wanted a beer and when she said yes, he told her to grab him one from the fridge, too.  Ha.  Luckily, Kyria gets Phil's sense of humor and wasn't put off by his, um, lack of hospitality!

This is getting lengthy so I'll stop there! My next post will cover Thursday, the day before the wedding which included a ladies lunch and mani's/pedi's and our rehearsal dinner. It was also the day when I became a complete scatterbrain.

If you've been married, were you calm during the week of your wedding? Luckily, my 'stressed' phase was fairly contained and by my wedding day I was referred to as "Bridechilla" by the hair and make-up people.  :)