redxdollxshoes

Back from mini-moon vacation to S.IL wineries. More on that later. I've been terribly lax about posting about my wedding.


That's a pic of my bridegrl Amy giving her wedding speech. I'm the one in red, of course, with Shawn next to me. It was a happy day and I'm thrilled that I was able to do exactly what I wanted and still provide a great time for everyone. Here are some favorite moments:

1. Everyone getting their makeup done in the hotel room beforehand (even my brideboy Josh got his dark circles covered and some individual lashes put on). I laid out the wings and everyone tried them on, shaking off as much glitter as we could. I decided against wearing the wings I'd gotten for me because I was afraid it would just be too much with the bright red dress/shoes/black fishnets/tiara. But against the black dresses they looked lovely, and the vinyl batwings were perfect for Josh.

2. Headed off one emergency...we'd forgotten the poem that Josh was going to read. I was upset until Shawn discovered the museum had a wireless connection. Best Man Colin printed it out and all was saved.

3. Walked in and was immediately engulfed in a sea of people, all of whom wanted to talk to me. That was a little crazy, but people were good about getting alcohol for me. Yay, alcohol. I had been worried about the museum being too small, but the set up was actually perfect. The flowers that I had ordered from a flower shop the day before had arrived...red orchids for the girls and dark purple calla lilies for me.

4. We totally winged the ceremony. We attempted getting everyone together for a rehearsal the night before, but it was completely different now that there were chairs and tables set up. The processional (string quartet version of "Just Like Heaven") started before we were ready. I had to yell for Michelle before she walked down so I could hand her her bouquet. Ray still had his glass of wine in his hand. Flower girl Diane had rose petals stuffed down the front of her dress and threw them out from her cleavage. Can't wait to see pictures of that.

5. Shawn and I seriously wrote the vows the day before. Or at least I started them and he finished them. They're locked in his emails to Grahm, so I might have to ask him to copy and paste them into the comments. But it was stuff like, "Will you give neck rubs when the world gets hard and laugh when it takes itself too seriously." Later on one of Shawn's friends said, "You two actually had acheivable vows. Usually they're stuff like, 'I'll love you till the stars go out,' and nobody believes them, but things like neck rubs and good food are in the realm of possibility."

6. Josh read the poem we'd picked out, "Falling In Love Is Like Owning a Dog". Then Grahm read our vows, reading them exactly the way Shawn sent them to him..."Do you, blank, take Jessica to be your husband/wife?" When he read them to me I said I do before he read the last line. I think people found that cute and endearing, but I'll still be mortified till the end of my days.

7. Speeches! Dinner! More drinking! Dancing! Once people got some food in them, it turned into a huge dance party. I was excited about having really good food at my wedding, but I was so preoccupied with being social that I could barely choke down my pesto tortellini and caprese salad. If you were at my wedding, please comment about the food because I was much more about the bar than the pasta station that night.

8. Our dj rocked. My problem with traditional weddings is that long ago it was decided that proper music for a wedding is bad 70's disco. Seriously, what is up with that? We had our dj play mostly new wave and britpop, and it was fantastic. There was music for my parents and their friends too, but good stuff like David Bowie and the Rolling Stones. Quite frankly, my family were fine with whatever was playing. One of my favorite moments was watching my mom and aunts getting down to "Girls and Boys" by Blur. Pretty soon the whole wedding was a hardcore dance party. Michelle commented the next day that it was the horniest wedding ever because people were hooking up and dancing sexy all around us. Hee hee.

9. Honestly, everyone had fun across the board. People from my friends to my mom's friends to my great aunts were telling me that it was the best wedding they'd ever been to. There was such a great energy flowing and no bad wedding drama that I could see. Rock.

10. We got kicked out at midnight (leaving the floor covered with smeared rose petals and alcohol) and I think everyone split into different afterparties. We had some people come back to our hotel room with us, but at that point the adrenaline we'd been riding on all night crashed and Shawn and I just drank water while we all chatted.

I'm just so happy we got to have this amazing party and were able to do it exactly the way we wanted and it all worked out. I'm dying to post more pictures, but we haven't gotten them back yet. Hopefully sometime this week. Honestly, I think the pictures will say more than I ever could about the whole night.

The wedding is now just a little over a week away. Um, eek! Honestly, I'm not crazy-stressed out bride. I think most of the craziness will happen next week when people start arriving. Today I got my roots colored so that I'm a nice monochrome black again, and I also bought drugstore sundries, including teeth whitening strips. I've never considered these things before, but I figured I might want a whiter smile for the wedding. Quite frankly, it probably doesn't matter that much since I always wear red lipstick and that makes teeth look whiter anyway, but hopefully on The Day I won't look in the mirror and think, "Damn, I really should have gotten some whitening strips a week ago." I also got my hair cut at work on Tuesday and my girl wants to do a style-trial (new word completely just invented by me) next week. This is hardly a traditional wedding, but there's still a good amount of vanity involved. I've never claimed to not be vain, so it doesn't bother me that much.

I still need to try on the dress/fishnets/shoes/tiara/wings, just to make sure it all looks as good together in reality as it does in my head, but today is pretty steamy and we don't have any a/c, so don't feel like doing it today.

Last week was spent in San Diego hanging out at Comic-Con. It was a lot of fun. We didn't get to go to some of the bigger panels we wanted, because the crowds were insane. But we did get to see Ellen Forney, who did our invitations. We showed her our tattoos and she got all happy and took pictures and promised to post them on her blog. They haven't been posted yet, but if they are I will definitely link to it. It was a happy few days amongst the storm troopers, catwomen and slave girl Princess Leias. The weather was perfect as always. It's just funny what Californians consider to be "humid." No matter how hot it gets over there, there's always a cool breeze to balance it out. Unlike sweaty Chicago.

This Saturday is my bachelorette party! Most girls get hunky guys in thongs. I get zombie burlesque. Rock.

We got back yesterday afternoon from Indiana. The wedding was actually quite lovely and beautifully done...Colin's sister Emily had really pretty bouquets of large orange and yellow flowers for fall. The dresses were pretty, or at least will be if the bridesmaids dye them black instead of that greenish color. And there were totally fireworks! The banquet hall had a pond behind them and they had fireworks for about 15 minutes, which was really cool. Definitely the show stopper was the groomsmens tuxes, which usually isn't the case. The groom had everyone wear these pimped out tuxes with long coats, a double gold chain on the pants, and fedoras with a large white band around them. For the first time at a wedding, Shawn blended in.

Colin's wife Marcie was in the wedding, and was pretty aggravated by the whole thing. They made her and one other girl cover up their tattoos so it looked like they were horribly bruised. She asked the hairdresser for just a simple bun, and got a head full of bobby pins instead. Colin's family totally forgot the shoes she was supposed to wear, so she wore the brides instead (which were a couple sizes too large) and the bride just went barefoot since no one could tell with the dress anyway. And she was really unhappy about having to sit at the head table when Colin (who was an usher) got to sit with us. She and Colin developed signals for her to tell him to get her another drink. When the dinner ended and the dancing started she came over to our table and we talked the whole time.

The dj wasn't bad. There was the usual mix of typical wedding songs, but there were some stuff that was a little different, like "Zoot Suit Riot," and they played "Let's Dance" by David Bowie, which was happy. The end of the wedding was devoted to "Let's Get It On" type songs, so there was a whole lot of grinding. I don't want to say that most of the other girls there were a bunch of whores, but the guys who brought them as dates are pretty slutty themselves so it worked. Colin's cousin brought his girlfriend or date or whatever, who looked like she could be kind of cool with short black hair, tattoos (okay, they were just Chinese characters, but whatever), short black skirt and black stiletto boots (and a pink tube top with not much to hold it up...hee hee). Then we met her back at the hotel, and she was basically a club slut who talked about how she was so wasted because she tipped the bartender $20 to make sure her drinks were strong and she was from Chicago where she was used to paying $101 dollars for a night out (I'm not making that up!). Shawn, Marcie and I went up the elevator with her and her boyfriend, said goodnight, and as soon as they turned the corner she said really loudly, "The most boring people in the world are right over there. I couldn't have a conversation with them." We just started laughing.

Marcie came back with us because Colin wanted to say goodbye to people and get her stuff. I took the millions of bobby pins out of her hair, and we waited for Colin (she didn't have a key to get back to her room). And we waited. And waited. Eventually Shawn went and took a shower. Still no Colin. Marcie was justifiably getting pretty pissed. She said, "He's probably with Pat in a liquor store parking lot, having some big, serious talk." Finally Shawn got out of the shower and decided to check the rooms, just in case Colin and Pat forgot our room number and were waiting for us. About ten minutes later we hear their voices outside and Marcie says, "Watch this, there's going to be some big story." Sure enough, they burst in saying, "Okay, you have to hear this!" Apparently Colin and Pat got Marcie's clothes (actually, they got one shoe. They totally couldn't find her stuff except for one shoe!), and Pat said, "Is that it?" and Colin said, "Yeah," and Pat took off without realizing he was Colin's ride. So Colin had to get someone from the banquet hall to drive him to the hotel, went to Pat's room and punched him, and they had big fight (well, one of those boys wrestling fights, not a serious one). They had just forgiven each other and were having a beer when Shawn showed up. Colin said, "Dude, we just had a fight!" and Shawn said, "Really? Well, you're about to have another one." It was pretty funny watching Colin trying to explain it all...he even handed Marcie his beer and said, "See? It's the first one and it's still heavy!" I think he probably still got in trouble that night because he kept wanting to hang out and they had tons of stuff to do early in the morning before their flight (like find Marcie's other shoe!), but we agreed it all comes down to this...don't ever let drunk boys do anything!