Wedding Eve

It's 11:30 p.m. on my wedding eve and somehow, and lord knows I have NO idea how this happened, but I'm the only one awake in the house and it's because I have to wait for the dryer to finish. I wish I could make this stuff up people, especially since I maybe have 2 items in the entire load, but I'm dead serious. One minute, we were "preparing the staging area" which means that we brought all necessary items for tomorrow into the living room and labeled them appropriately. There will be "two waves" going to the hall tomorrow. My Mom and I will be in the "first wave" which means we'll be driving to the hall with the two gowns (my gown is packed with a person's worth of tissue paper) and my brother will follow behind in his car with the boxes of benchers, kiddie bags and our mini suitcases.

My house is running on army time right now, and Dad HolyLandHipster is Major while Mom HolyLandHipster is the General. Me, I'm just going along for the ride. So, here I am, just chilling out and waiting for the kids laundry to be done. And, my sister is anal about shrinkage (that's what she has to deal with since my nephew is 6 months and 21 pounds!) so the dryer is on the LOWEST SETTING POSSIBLE and my Mom threw in some bath towels too. So basically, the reason I won't be sleeping this evening is because the dryer is NEVER GOING TO FINISH!

If only the pair of socks I need for the wedding tomorrow wasn't in the dryer, I would just say screw it and head off to bed. No matter what, I want to be in bed and asleep by 1:00, cause the kids have been waking up at like 6:00 and crying for hours! I can't wait for the wedding to be over so I can get to the hotel and get some sleep!! Its been a long week with a 2 and 6 month old in the house; we're all reall wiped.

So, Friday was actually a lot of fun, I only cried once when my Dad started yelling about the weather. My brother-in-law didn't make it to New York for Shabbos, the tornado watch closed down the airport so he was stuck in Cleveland. That was upsetting, we all could have used an extra set of hands on Friday.

Mom and I spent the morning pampering with manicure/pedicures and then blow outs. Afterwards, we ran some food errands at SuperSol and then came back and tried to tackle the downstairs and clean up. The house was a wreck and Shabbos was coming! We cleaned up and I managed to steal a few minutes upstairs to just deal with what I needed to deal with. Buggy sent me 2 dozen long-stemmed red roses for Shabbos and my friends Debra, Shulamit and Marnina sent a gorgeous little bouquet of flowers. It was really nice going into Shabbos surrounded by flowers.

My nephew's cries woke me this morning about an hour before I wanted to be up, and so I decided to help my Mom take care of the kids. We got my niece dressed and made it in time for the end of the Haskamah minyan where my Dad was making a Kiddush in honor of the wedding. We told my niece it was her birthday and she was really happy to see the "birthday" cake. She didn't want any, so my Mom, Grandmother and I all took her upstairs to daven with the main minyan. She was happy when we managed to get her a lollipop from the Shul candyman. The Rabbi said some nice words about me and my family during his speech, a lot of people said Mazal Tov, and then we went home for lunch. I managed to catch about 3 hours sleep this afternoon and then got up to prepare for the Shabbos Kallah.

It was a bit hectic getting ready and I only cried for a bit when I couldn't find the serving spoon for the fruit. I was still really tired and needed help just getting everything ready. Also, my stomach is one big knot at this point and the nerves were really getting to me. Fortunately, Shulamit, Marnina and Debra really helped calm me down. I was so happy they came by and we had a really nice Shalosh Seudot.

And then, before I knew it, Shabbos was over and we were full on getting ready mode. Mom and I sat down and put the table numbers in all the place cards and then I packed up for the wedding and for Israel too! It's insane that I'm leaving so quickly, I could really use a few more days here in New York to tie up some loose ends, but that's just not going to happen.

I've been listening to this mix that I made and I'm so happy I made it, the music is really perfect and relaxing. I keep saying that I'll be relaxed as soon as I know that Buggy is at the hall tomorrow, and I really hope I'm not just fooling myself. Meanwhile, as I scramble here with tons of wedding stuff to do, guess what Buggy is doing?

He's at the freaking movies!!!!

Can you believe it? I don't whether or not to be happy that he's entertained or upset because I have all this work to do and he's off enjoying himself at the movies. I would love to be at the movies right now, too! Hmmm, in retrospect, I think talking should have been added to the things not to do before the wedding. It's one thing to not see him, but maybe I shouldn't have been speaking to him either. That way, I would be sitting here right now annoyed that he's at the movies because I just wouldn't have known. I would have been blissfully ignorant and just assumed that he was relaxing back at the hotel and getting ready for tomorrow.

Anyway - I hope all these nerves will let me sleep! OK, I'm off to check on the dryer!