PWSD (Post-Wedding Stress Disorder)

After a 9-month engagement, our only daughter married her longtime best friend in a beautiful ceremony. Everyone told us that the ceremony and reception would be a blur, and of course they were right. And - also - of course there were a few blips over the course of the 2 days of festivities that did not go as planned. But over all, the bride and groom and all the guests had a wonderful time - so those potholes along the way are not at all important and will eventually fade into funny memories.

Here are some highlights:

• We had over 30 out-of-town guests for the wedding - many of them had never been to our town (Atlanta) before. They all seemed to enjoy the location and the hotel where we all stayed was wonderful (Spring Hill Suites - Marriott - highly recommend!)
• We had such good room rates that we rented a suite just to be a hospitality suite. This was very popular - especially with the young crowd!
  
• The groom played guitar on 3 numbers with the band during the reception - he rocked!!! Everyone was so impressed!
• The ceremony was so personal - the officiant talked individually about the bride and groom and what attracted them to each other. So very sweet.
• The bride wore the same wedding dress I wore 30 years ago. She also wore a cameo that was owned originally by my great-grandmother (I also wore it on this dress in 1978).
• We rented a 15-passenger van to transport our many guests to the rehearsal dinner and to the wedding. On Friday, Dad did the driving. For the wedding, we hired one of our son's friends to drive a loop all night taking guests from the reception to the hotel (so no one had to drive impaired). This worked out really well!
• The hall we rented for the ceremony and reception was a hit - it was beautiful, comfortable, had a great bar and everyone enjoyed the food (or so I heard).
• The flowers were lovely - exactly what the bride had in mind.
  

Of course, we had never given a wedding before, so there were some things I wish we had done differently (or we didn't do them at all). I would share this to anyone who was planning a wedding in case they could use the info. Here they are in no particular order:

• Make a list of all the people you want pictures taken of on the wedding day. I didn't do this, and therefore, we have no formal pictures of the family groups who traveled long distances to be there.
• Our ceremony was almost 30 minutes late because a key person got lost. Don't know the answer for this except be sure to have someone who knows where they are going beforehand. :->
• After the ceremony, we took pictures for 30 minutes. Then we asked the band to announce the wedding party. The bride and groom were then supposed to dance. Woops - we forgot to bustle the dress first! Bustling did not go smoothly in spite of practice. Oh well.
  
• Don't schedule things too close together on the wedding day. I knew it would be difficult to get all 6 girls plus my hair and makeup done in 2 hours - well, I was right! It actually took twice that amount of time, which caused some real backups in the schedule for the day. One thing I should not have done - had my hair washed at the salon! I could have saved so much time if I had done it at home before I came. :-> The poor wedding party nearly starved because we had to rush from the hair appointments to the pictures.
  
• I should have emailed the entire timeline to the wedding party ahead of time so they would have an idea of when things were going to happen.
• Another dumb thing - I told the band to announce the bride and groom were leaving before being sure the limo driver was here to drive them away.
• I wish I had had time to take the bride around to all the people that we invited to the wedding just so she could thank them for attending.
  

In spite of all of these problems, the wedding was one of the most memorable days of our lives - especially for our daughter and her new husband. We can't wait for the next family member to get married so we can party again!