The Roller Coaster Weekend

Where do I begin? How do I start? I feel like I am still in the seat of the Roller Coaster Weekend.

Friday, March 21

3:00pm It is decided officially that I will be hosting a bachelorette party for a friend in 3 hours. I don't know the bride well but we all pal around the same crowd. My house seems to be a good option and my AWESOME hubby is willing to take kiddos into the basement and let us have the main floor.

7:00pm The Bride arrives with a couple of others and we proceed to have a wonderful time of fun, fellowship and food. We make virgin margaritas and laugh and talk around the table for hours. The Bride is glowing and excited and it is contagious! We are all wedding-gitty and acting like a bunch of girls.

This is the Beautiful Bride.

As you will read I become much more fond of and attached to her as the Roller Coaster Weekend progresses.

9:45pm We pray for The Bride and her weekend and marriage. She is heading out to meet her bridesmaids at her house when they arrive from Portland.

10:15pm My Friend's phone rings. Her husband is asking if she's okay. The emergency sirens are going off in town. She assures him she'll head out soon and is fine.

10:30pm I am not ready to go to bed and have the idea that I need to get my table set for Easter Sunday. I clean up the house, set the table, and finally head to bed around midnight.


Saturday, March 22

9:00am I get up and come upstairs. I see that I have several messages on my phone. The messages devestate me. After leaving my house The Bride and The Sister-In-Law were in a roll over car wreck. They swerved to miss a deer and again to miss an oncoming car and over-corrected the pick up and rolled 2 1/2 times. The Bride now lays in a hospital bed in Billings and the Sister-In-Law in Cody. The Bride has compressed fractures in her vertabrae, a broken scapula, staples in her head, a bruised lung, and many other scrapes, bruises, and what not. The Sister-In-Law has a broken rib, a broken collar bone, a bruised lung, and some tissue damage in her neck along with the scrapes and bruises.

I knew I could not blame myself for this, although I felt so responsible. Thank God we didn't have alcohol. Thank God they are going to be okay. Man, what a bummer. What a huge, huge bummer.

10:00am Another phone call comes in to say "they are still going to try to have the wedding." So, I head to town with another gal after a bit and we get to the wedding/reception site.

11:30am The Wedding set-up begins. We have a big box of stuff, a folder of notes from The Bride, and a whole lot of strong personalities that want to pull this off for the couple but don't know exactly what they want.

This is the auditorium before we begin...a big room with nothing but floor.

Here we are starting the set-up

The Men collaborate on how to build a buck-rail fence

Monica the Magnificent assesses the decorations

1:30pm Tables are in place, we put the coverings on as many as we had enough for, we start to organized whose who and what's what. Now it's time for a Walmart run.

Amanda the Amazing and I jump into a car and head to Walmart to pick out the flowers and get more decorations. This is quite the feat. Every decision is heavily weighed with the question "What would THEY want?" We find the PERFECT roses and pull together as much as we can.

3:00pm We are ready to begin really decorating. Out comes the ribbon, scissors, flowers, wire, tape, rubber bands, creative minds, and such.

We send The Men on a Testorone Task: go get us some sage brush. The chainsaw-crazed crew rushes out to a pick up truck, drooling and ready for their mission. When they return it appears that they might have thought their Task was to clear an entire field of sage brush. I have to apologize here to The Men for harassing them for getting so much. We used all of it!

Here is the buck-rail fence after The Men successfully assemble it and added the hay bales and lanterns for accents. They also hung the canvas pieces behind to help hide the stage. Way to go Men! Faith the Fabulous and Amanda the Amazing "pretty up" the fence
Flowers are arranged in cowboy boots for centerpieces on the Wedding Party Table
I begin my relationship with The Sage Brush

The Perfectionist in me shows up and works on every little detail

Somewhere in the midst of the afternoon I lost complete track of time. My Perfectionist Decorating Frenzy had completely overtaken me and it was work, work, work. Fabulous Faith and I bounced approval and redirection off of each other as we widdled away at detail after detail.

Here is the progress on the "altar"


These are the centerpieces for each table. The Bride had done all of the work previous and we added the sage and ribbon.

I know that at some point during the afternoon the deprivation of sanity took over and we had a "moment" with The Sage Brush and Tulle.

9:00pm I finally load up in the car with The Hubby who came and helped for the evening and we came home exhausted but overjoyed that we could serve The Bride and The Groom this way.

10:00pm We get a phone call that The Sister-In-Law that was in the wreck and her hubby are going to come down and stay with us. We get their bathroom cleaned, their bed ready, and meet them when they arrive.

1:00am I finally get to sleep.

Sunday, March 23, Easter

7:30am Up and in the shower. It's going to be a big day.

8:30am Wake up the sleepy boy and get him in his Easter clothes.

9:00am In the car, down the road. We go to get Lil' Miss at her grandparents house and get them dress for church. The Kiddos look adorable and off to church we go.

~I'll post pictures of Easter on the next post~

12:15pm Done with church. It was AWESOME. Rush home and get Easter dinner on the table for 11 of us.

12:45pm We enter the house and soon discover the oven never went on to cook the Prime Rib! Oh well! Eric and I come up with a plan to solve the problem.

1:30pm It's time to eat! And about this time The Bride is released from the hospital in Billings and is on her way back to Cody.

2:30pm Clean up and get ready to go to The Wedding!

4:00pm We arrive at The Wedding.

I will have another post at another time about the wedding but let me tell you this...

The Wedding was amazing. The Bride was beautiful. The Family was incredible. The Annointing was apparent. The Spirit as prevalent. The Fellowship was coveted. The Joy was abundant. The Love was overwhelming.

I will look forward to getting pictures from the wedding and sharing more about it with you in the near future. My heart was captured by The Bride and The Groom. They are incredible people.

10:00pm We realize we had better go get our kids and head home.

12:30am We hit the pillows hard.

What came out of this Roller Coaster Weekend for me personally? I learned quite a bit. Here are some of the things I learned or was reminded of:

- accidents happen

- crisis can bring people together in unexpected ways

- trivial things get put in perspective quickly, like what I was going to wear to the wedding

- it isn't worth fussing over an oven that didn't go on

- the enemy can't stop the Master plan