When we got home on the evening of Thanksgiving, I had to pack because I would be leaving in the morning on Friday and not coming back until Sunday evening. I got everything together that I would need for the next couple days and we went to sleep. In the morning, I woke up and got ready for the day. Nicol came and picked me up and we headed to Bloomington to meet my mom, PJ, Madison, Sydney, and Devin to get manicures and pedicures. It was fun to spend some time relaxing with my family before the craziness of the next couple days began!
After we were done with our mani/pedis, Nicol and I headed out to pick up my dress at the shop where I had it altered. Then we headed to the Grand Hotel in Downtown Minneapolis to check in. Although most of the plans for Jason and my wedding were “untraditional,” we decided the one tradition that we would adhere to would be that we wouldn’t spend the night together the night before the wedding. We decided that Jason would spend the night at home and I would spend the night at the Grand Hotel with my best friends, Nicol, Lesley, and Madison.) So Nicol and I checked in at the hotel around 1:30 and had the massive amount of stuff we had packed to get ready the next day brought up to the room. Then we took off to run a couple last minute errands. I needed to find some lipstick for the day of the wedding and I also needed a clutch to keep some day of essentials in. Luckily, we found both pretty quickly in our trip to Macy’s. We stopped at the deli, grabbed some food, and headed back to the hotel room.
The plan was to relax in the room for a little bit, eat our lunch, and watch a little TV. However, we didn’t realize how late it was and we actually only had a couple minutes to relax, eat our lunch, and watch TV as we had to get ready to head over to the Metropolitan for our rehearsal. We left the hotel at about 3:30 and got to the Metropolitan at about 3:45. Although the rehearsal was not the most exciting thing to do, with 12 kids in the wedding we had to run through it a couple times so that everyone would know their part in the ceremony.
I truly believed that the rehearsal would only take 30 minutes when I planned out the timing for our reservations for the groom’s dinner, so I mistakenly made our reservations for 5:00. We showed up around 5:30 and the half of the guests for the groom’s dinner that weren’t at the rehearsal were already there. Also, I am pretty sure that I did not count the number of guests attending anywhere near correctly because we kept having to add tables and rearranging the room…which by the way, I HATED when I used to work at Buca and I had to deal with groom’s dinners! I guess I should have been more understanding, oh well! The groom’s dinner turned out really well, once everything was figured out. There were definitely A LOT of people there…we had the whole back room with the exception of one table!
When everyone was done eating, Jason and I got up and thanked everyone for coming and celebrating with us. It was also time to hand out the gifts that we had gotten for everyone participating in the wedding. For the adults in the wedding party, we decided that jewelry was an appropriate gift. We got Sean a watch and we had a necklace designed by the same woman that did my jewelry for the wedding for Nicol and Kirsten. I also had bracelets made for my three besties (Nicol, Lesley, & Madison) to match the one I would be wearing on the wedding day. The little girls in the wedding all got a small pearl necklace to wear with their dress. Then came the most exciting gift. The overall theme for the wedding was that Jason and I would be becoming “Team Jaglo.” Jason designed a logo for “Team Jaglo” and we had it printed on zip-up track jackets for everyone participating in the wedding. I have to say that they were pretty cool and they were very well received by everyone who got them!
After Buca, we headed out to McGovern’s for a drink. It was a smaller group at McGovern’s…Brad, Cindy, Anne, Raj, Andy, Dan, Madison
We drank some wine, ate some leftover pizza and talked for a while. Jason called around 11:30 when he got home to say goodnight. Around midnight, Nicol, Lesley, and Madi started to fade pretty quickly and they all fell asleep. I, on the other hand, was pretty excited for the next day and was not able to fall asleep right away. I decided to run a bath to help me try to relax. I grabbed a glass of wine and my iPhone and watched a little bit of the movie version of Rent while relaxing in the tub. After about ten minutes, I realized that I was pretty exhausted and decided to go to bed…the next day was going to be a big day!!!
