T & K 7/11/14

The Zappia clan had the honor of being in Tommy and Karis' wedding this past July.  I'm just now getting around to writing about it because I've just now finally recovered.  While the wedding preparations surely took more time in the lives of Tommy, Karis, and Mimi, it also took a serious amount of planning and prep on our part as well.  Considering that I'm the only one, of five people who dresses herself, (appropriately, at least) the outfit coordination alone was no small feat.  Five people, 3 days, multiple outfits per day, for all weather types, activity types, and comfort types.  And shoes, don't forget shoes!  Don't forget the camera, the sippy cups, the necklace to go with the grey dress, the infant tylenol, the swim vest, the black socks, baby monitor, the phone chargers, the card, the actual baby...you get the idea.

So the months of prep are finished and the wedding weekend is finally here.  We take half days from work on Thursday, pull the kids out of camp/daycare early, feed the cat and head off to Corning.  

And then the real wedding prep began.

And by "begins," I mean the last 10% of turning the 80 acre farm into a ceremony and reception site.  There were signs and lanterns to be hung, table decor to be placed, chairs to be setup,  and lights to be strung to name a few tasks.  I tried to keep the kids out of the way as much as possible while trying to help at the same time.  That was next to impossible.  Friday was more of the same all day until we had to get our hair done.  Even so, I was still making the seating assignment display with my bridesmaid dress on while the first guests were arriving. We used every possible minute.    

We also had to fit in practice being the ring bearer, the flower girl and jr. flower girl so that we didn't have any runaway wagons, guests with flower pedals flung in their faces or untimely swims in the pond.  

So the moment of truth arrives and it's time to walk down the aisle.  I'm the first one to go down and as I'm standing there, I realize Matt is standing next to me.  He was supposed to be with the groomsmen but he claims no one told him where to go.  Like this is the first wedding he's ever been to.  So we go down the aisle together and it works out fine.  The rest of the wedding party proceeds and then it's Luke's turn with Coco.  He did a very nice job of pulling her in the wagon slowly and and an even nicer job of conveniently parking the wagon in front of Matt instead of me.  Hallelujah! Ade comes down with her petals next and also does a great job. I expected her to come stand by me but instead she chose to stand with Karis' sister Libby.  Maybe I smelled bad?  Anyway, next came our beautiful blushing bride and the ceremony commenced.  I'll have you know that my kid was not the first one to melt down.  She may have been the second one but she wasn't first and she wasn't the loudest - I was so proud.  Actually, Corinna wasn't that bad but she did cause Matt to exit the groomsmen line for a short jaunt as quickly as he could exit stage left and as far as he could get - "stage left" being out into the middle of the field away from the ceremony.   

Tom and Karis had a really nice and brief (!) ceremony just as they had planned.   They could not have looked any more perfect and all of the hard worked paid off.  

Day 2 of the wedding was the "reception."  And there were quite a few people receiving and receiving pretty hard.   The weather cooperated and there was lots of fun happening left and right.  This included our own little maniac Luke on the golf carts.  Note to self: do not ride with Luke on anything with a motor.  It is scary and life threatening changing.   And it is now September and we hear about the golf carts every single day without fail.  Luke might actually be let down by Santa this year.

Anyway, we all had the best time that we never want to have again (kind of like college spring break in Mexico) - you're glad you did it and had a blast but it was exhausting and a lot of hard work having that much fun.