Wedding wrapup

Well, it's come and gone and I'm starting to recover. I'm feeling the intense sense of relief when something you've been working for for a long time, something you've put an enormous amount of energy, both physical and emotional, into, has passed. Each day I realize I have nothing left to plan. No more lists to review. No more ideas to hatch.

It was the party of my lifetime and it went off really well. Of course, I'm obsessing over all the things I DIDN'T get done. The groomsmen never had corsages -- I never got to it. I did the cake at the last moment, but it looked pretty. I didn't get a chance to take a picture before the bride had hacked into it. I made a throwing bouquet and I was able to find perfect orchids at the Ventura Farmer's market right Saturday morning.

I got a late start to the day because I had an obligation from 9 to 10 a.m. I couldn't get out of. Then I had to get the orchid and some more cash. So it was late when I got home. Rob and I got into one of our customary pre-Big Event fights. It has a lot more to do with a fundamental lack of complimentary work styles. I'm direct and can get hyper. Rob can dither and get scattered. Scattered can make me frantic. It gets ugly.

Then the middle refrigerator door shelf decided to take this moment to completely shatter when I opened the refrigerator door. The shelves on our Samsung developed cracks within a year of having the fridge. Everything -- barbecue sauce, A-1, salad dressings, pickles, mustards and other condiments shattered on our tile floor.

I couldn't handle it and left Rob to clean up the mess, which he had to get to right away because of the pets.

When I got to Ojai, I was the first one there. It was 11:30 a.m., which wasn't a really good sign. But I enjoyed the peace. The first person to arrive was Lindsay's hair stylist we'd hired for the day. Soon there was a steady trickle and I was running around. My big task was to get the alter ready. I had brought climbing red roses from my backyard. I'd been planning on using them for months and they were almost spent, but they still looked good. Problems with balancing proved as difficult as I'd thought they would, so arranging the flowers was a challenge.

I was able to get the perfect effect with the climbing roses. then I put white lilies in clear vases with white and clear pebbles on the bottom on top of small white columns. I brought bunch of ivy from home and we ran that from the vases down the columns and filled the vases with white lilies. These were framed in back by four silver vases of multicolored gladiolas.

These came from fiftyflowers.com, which I highly recommend. The gladiolas were an amazing array of colors and were spectacular as they opened. I also had ordered calla lilies, the kind with a tinge of pink on the edges and 6,000 rose petals. The white lilies, along with stargazers, regular yellow and red lilies and alstroemera came from my local flower guy who gives me really great flowers for a really good price.

Rob got the idea to give the flowers to a local hospital and after the wedding, we left some there for the senior center and gave some to a convalescent care center behind Ojai Valley Hospital. We felt so good about ourselves we went and spit on some homeless people to make up for it.

The tables looked good, with green and blue napkins and the little boxes looked great. After I'd filled all the favor boxes I'd bought to replaced the printed ones -- seriously about two hours later, the printed ones arrived. So I had to move all 300+ cookies to the new boxes. The package also contained little fabric dark red roses with fabric leaves, which looked perfect on the boxes. So I hot-glued them all on. I also printed out programs for the wedding on some really good stock I got from Michaels'. I used a picture of Ryan and Lindsay on them and I thought they looked good.

The centerpieces were a bit of a disappointment because the tables tilted and they didn't get quite the floating effect I was looking for. But they didn't look bad. The 6,000 rose petals looked fantastic on the tables.

My nephew Sean took on the role of coordinator. We weren't going to hire someone because we thought they'd get in the way. Sean stepped up and ordered us all around like a pro. He had to yell at me to get going and I was able to get home, dressed and back to Ojai in an hour. I was 15 minutes late, but hey, a good wedding should always keep you waiting.

The ceremony was really lovely. Sweet, simple and loving. My friend Kim sang, the flowers looked lovely. The bridal party looked gorgeous. The groomsmen looked handsomely studly. There was even the obligatory cute moment when the ringbearer got confused and had to be helped over to his place by one of the groomsmen.

We had cocktail hour and Miguel from Dearmore Catering, where Lindsay had worked for years, had made all kinds of fresh fruits, guacamole, cheese and stuffed mushrooms. Janine took lots of pictures. The dinner was fabulous, with tritip, salmon, chicken, rice and salad. I was really pleased.

The toasts were nice, although the DJ did thank the hosts Briggs Gamblin and Nicholas Guzik, which kind of stuck under my craw, especially as I ran around at the end handing out ungodly amounts of money, in addition to the money I'd already spent. Briggs had kicked in some cash and deserved a shout out, but this was mostly Rob and me.

It was kind of weird because Rob and I knew so few of the people at the wedding. Lindsay is my little outgoing dynamo and she knows more people than Bill Clinton, so she had tons of friends to invite. By about 9 p.m. I was so tired I was about to collapse, so Rob and I headed home. The party continued from only about another hour or so, although it moved to Dave and Mark's (groomsman and best man's) apartment.

Lindsay has been running around saying she felt as though she had "a $20,000 wedding." She's got to be kidding. It would have cost a lot more, but we really saved by renting the Little House of Ojai, which is an amazing site for very little money. Dearmore Catering did the wedding at cost, plus a tip -- I made sure it was a good one. The flowers were a lot less expensive than if they'd been done by a florist and to-it-yourself decorations would be good if I were better at guaging how much I need. The rentals were what rentals are and there's not too much you can do about it. We did get a professional discount through the Dearmore connection. So it worked out well as far as bang for the buck. But the incidentals, the special makeup and hair people, the wedding cake, the five host help people at $25 an hour and the dress and veil all add up. The only things we didn't pay for were the DJ and the wine, beer and liquor, which is fair considering that Rob and I don't drink (although we do dance).

My dad came for the wedding, as did Paula and her family. The rest of the family was unable to make it. Joyce and Jennifer were going to come but got sick at the last minute. Mary is in some kind of snit with Briggs that she will eventually get over and come to regret. But that will be her problem. Courtney couldn't come. And now she has gallstones, so she's in no condition to go anywhere. Rick, Marilyn and Duncan all came out, which was great and Colin and Sean were there. But it's expensive to get to California and especially Ventura during Memorial Day weekend, so there wasn't more family, which is sad.

So now it's all over. It's starting to hit me that this is it. Even if there are other marriages in the future, and I hope there aren't, we aren't going all out like this one. There are no more graduations, no more schooling, no more nothing. As one of the ladies at the Senior Center said -- Little House is a senior center on weekdays -- she's a grandmom and she just has to show up at weddings. I can't wait.