I really was a zen bride. Honestly, throughout the planning process, the only thing that ever sent me over the edge was the guest list. Once we hit 400 guests on our invite list and the husband’s parents were still trying to tack on more guests, I lost my mind a bit. 400 guests seemed obscene (we wound up with just over 300 in case you’re wondering) and each additional invite made me want to curl up in a ball until it was all over. But really, I didn’t get worked up about much.
That is, until the night before the wedding.
We had our rehearsal dinner in a nearby town and wound up being hit with a major storm that evening. Everyone was at the after-bar a few blocks away from where we held the rehearsal dinner and all of a sudden, the power went out in the bar. My brother and dad proceeded to get in an argument about who was driving who home and next thing I know, I was following behind behind my dad with a few bridesmaids in tow as he left in a huff.
I was more concerned with keeping the peace in my family than I was with the state of our backyard. It honestly didn’t even occur to me that anything could tear our circus-sized tent down. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
My zen attitude went to shit the moment I saw the state of the backyard. Chairs were tipped and broken, the arbor fell down, the tent collapsed, all the decorations were destroyed — it was a disaster. It was midnight the night before the wedding and everything was a mess. All I could do was silently cry and try to clean up.
But never fear! It was my family to the rescue! Most of my family arrived at 6:00 a.m. the next day to get everything put back together, the tent company arrived around 8:00 to put the tent back up, and by the time I arrived back home from my hair appointment around noon, the entire backyard had been transformed.
Never have I felt such relief or appreciated my family more.
- jess
