Garden of Thought

I'm packing my car with decorations and getting ready to drive down for rehearsal today (it's an hour and a half away) and now I'm seeing snow. Really, weather? You have to blinkin' snow? Ran to check weather predictions, looks like all will be clear by tonight thank God.

We have two hours today to rehearse and decorate, then tomorrow morning it's show time!

So far we've had one bridesmaid drop out, one set of grandparents snowed in and one set of parents (his) with pnuemonia, plus the summary the officiant gave of what she was going to talk about didn't pass the bride's inspection and they are scrambling for a different talk. Turns out his family didn't really invite anyone at all so it's all been informally through efforts by the snowed-in grandma and I have no idea at all how many of his relatives will be there. 0_0

My dancers are asking me "Covered bellies? Or are uncovered bellies okay?" and I have no idea. I'm just telling them to wear whatever they like at this point.

*Vizzini voice*: "Wait til I get going! Now where was I...?"

Egads, I swear they go out of their way to make things difficult in Boot Camp - even when they are on their way out the door. They had to get up at 4am, had graduation at 11, then had to literally run 2 miles to their barracks to get their luggage, then 2 miles back to catch the bus - and if they missed that bus, they were out of luck because it was a 3 hour bus ride and the plane left at 4!

Our guy managed to get the bus and caught the leg out of GA, but then it was delayed in takeoff so he missed the connection - which left 10 minutes before it was supposed to and then taxied around for over half an hour while he helplessly watched. He got stranded in Denver. >_< Late enough there were no more flights.

He finally straggled in this morning, thank God, I expect he'll just want to sleep around the clock to recover.

Wow, so many details in a wedding - I'm SO glad I've had some time ahead to work on this thing, here we are a month-and-a-half to go already. It reminds me of child-rearing, how you start all idealistic (MY child will never play with THOSE...MY child will only eat organic...) and end up just happy if they are safe and can give you five minutes peace at the end of the day.

We started off with "None of that icky tulle! Only real cloth table covers, real candles..." Now we have tulle swoops because frankly it's cheap and this is a big space to cover. Battery powered tea candles that don't have to be tended and will stay on for hours, and I spent yesterday ironing the wrinkles out of cheap organza table covers because 25 tables of real fabric was waaay too expensive no matter how we did it.

I swore I wouldn't use any of that cheap Dollar Tree garbage but here I am with centerpieces that are mostly made of Dollar Tree pieces. >_< They are pretty but my inner principled "shop local" person is generating some cognitive dissonance on my little Cognitive Dissonance machine when I really look at them.

Why are so many weddings notoriously covered in tulle and organza? Now I know!

We finally found a venue for my daughter's wedding in March - had to nudge the date over a week as someone else had already copped the first choice, but SO glad to have that booked. It's in an old barn that's been revamped into a very nice events space with a huge wooden dance floor and a stage, there's big rafters up above already pre-strung with lights. Woo!

Now I finally know some things for certain like the date, the place and how many windows we need to decorate. They have a big entry that the bride and groom come in through with a curtain rod 9 feet up. She didn't care for the curtains they had available to rent so I'm getting some sheers for it and we'll add swoops of sparkly tulle on the sides in her chosen ocean blue color. I think it'll look pretty good and not cost much so win-win!

Now to things like culling the guest lists and so on, still a lot to do. She wants cake toppers that are a chibi crow and dove so we'll make those from sculpy ourselves. Her groom shipped out to Basic training a couple weeks ago and she didn't take it too well but is getting better now that she's received some letters.

My eldest is engaged(!!!!) and looking at March with lots of spring daffodils and bluebells for flowers at her wedding. 0.o He's a great guy, I'm so happy with her choice but it will be definitely an adjustment in my family as I'll have TWO sons instead of one and I get to add the infamous "Mother-in-Law" to my list of secret identities. That being right up there with "Landlady" in most people's minds it should be interesting.

Also at work I learned to make soap with lye (lye is evil but it does nice things to fats), which has been interesting to me as I never did take Chemistry in school so I never got the "be a mad scientist" out of my system when I was younger. This is why I like my espresso machine so much, it goes WHOOOOSH when it makes coffee and grand clouds of dramatic steam go up and it makes me think I should don an Albert Einstein wig when using it.

So! Fair warning I may ramble on about wedding decor or stuff as this year goes along. And soap? Yeah.