A few days ago my youngest sister married a nice young man in the Bay Area.  It was a fun weekend although everything didn't go as planned for Tom and Tamara.

We knew their wedding would be occurring approximately 2 month's before ours.  We thought that was a good thing for us as it would help us to remember all of those last minute organization things that would be needed.  We learned some important lessons like REMEMBER TO BRING CLOTHS, TEST YOUR CAMERA'S FIRST, AND WATCH WHERE YOU STEP.

Before I get to far into the story, let me first give you the link to their wedding site www.i5net.net/cewed.  Most of the pictures are posted.

We took Friday off so we could get down to Pleasanton and help with any last minute items.  We had to make a quick trip down to Milpitas so that Tamara could pick up her Brides Maids uniforms (dresses).  When we got back from that trip, things started to unravel for us.  She opened up the bag full of dresses and realized they had ordered one dress wrong.  Tamara called up the Bridal place and they kept telling her they couldn't do anything about it without a receipt from the original order, which was back in Sacramento.  Eventually she got a hold of some that straightened things out and ordered the correct dress.  It was a catastrophe but it was starting to set a mood of things to come.

The second time we noticed things weren't going our way, was when we went to get ready for the rehearsal and dinner, we realized we had left our garment bag at home.  Tom had to borrow a shirt from his dad, but Tamara had nothing else to wear but the sun dress she wore down that day.  It wouldn't work for all three days worth of events.

Then we got to the church for the rehearsal, Tom pulled out his video camera to get some footage, and the thing wouldn't record.  Tom had tested the camera earlier in the day, but he only tested the playback features to see what was on some tapes.  Nope, It would record, but only a black screen.  Like the lens cap was still on, but I double checked it and it was off!  So we put away the video camera and took some digicam shots.  We got through the rest of the rehearsal and dinner well and when we got back to Tom's parent place, Tom decided that rather than drive home that night to get the garment bag, he would just take Tamara shopping in the morning to pick out some new dresses.  We had to go back to Milpitas anyway to return the bad Bridesmaid dress.  

Most of the Bridesmaids stayed over the night, hot-tubing and being girls.

The doorbell rang and Tom got up to answer it.  Another of Elisabeth's guests for the night had showed up.  Tom went to show her out to the hot tub, and ran full force into a plate glass table in the darkened living room.  At first we thought I had broken my leg.  It swole out about an inch. in 5 minutes.  We put ice on it and the swelling went away.  Indy called about then and invited Tom out for a couple of beers with the guys.  There is a pretty decent pub in Pleasanton.  Despite my, "thought to be broken leg", I couldn't pass that up.  The leg was very sore that night and required that I sleep with it elevated.  It wasn't too comfortable.  

We got up the next morning and I limped around the house to get dressed.  Tamara and I got something to eat and quickly headed out on our morning shopping adventures.  We got the dress returned and conveniently there was a Ross next door.  Tamara quickly went through the racks and found 5 or 6 dresses to try on.  Figuring it was still early, we decided to drive by Fry's on the way back and see how much new Video Camera's were.  Fry's has a good selection and we found one with a lot of features we liked.  Then it took us 20 minutes to find a sales person that would help us and another 20 minutes to check out (those two things are always the bad part about fry's). 

We got back to the house at 11:30, we thought we were doing good because the wedding wasn't until 2pm.  But as soon as we got back we were told the photographer would be there at 12 noon and we had to get showered and dressed up for that.  Tom remembered to put his new camera's battery on the charger and then started getting ready. Remember Tom is still moving pretty slow on that leg and wasn't doing stairs to well.

The photographer was late and we ended up just beating him.  Tom went to get his digicam so he could get some shots too.  When he went to swap out the film chips, he couldn't find the others.  The Camera bag had been left open earlier in the day and the camera had been moved several times in the day.  At some point both of the reserve chips (about 60 pictures worth) had fallen out.  Tom scrambled around, and eventually found the small 2meg chip with about 12 pictures worth of capacity.  So we had to stick to Tamara's camera for most of the "day of" pictures.

The picture taking at the house went well and eventually we got Elisabeth off in her carriage.  Then we started gathering up our stuff so we could head over to the church.  It was at this point that Tom forgot the sword for the cake cutting pictures.

For the most part the bad luck stuff stops at this point.  The ceremony and reception went very well, and we all had a good time.  take a look at their wedding site if you don't believe me www.i5net.net/cewed .

Most of the things that went wrong were my fault.  Tamara and I both did a last sweep of the house and we both missed the garment bag which was hanging near the front door.  It all could have been much worse if I hadn't made good lists for all the other things we did remember.  But for our wedding and honeymoon, I'm making some much better lists and planning things more thoroughly.

- Thomas