My daughter decided to stick with having her ceremony at the bowling alley. It was where they had their first date, first kiss, a lot of firsts. It was a cheesy looking place and the room was small but it worked into a perfect ceremony. (The hotel would have been so pretty but c'est la vie. They couldn't make the time work after all.) Not bad with three days notice. I bought out everything in Michael's that was white, purple, lavender or silver in the way of tulle, ribbons, flowers and what-have-you. Party City for cheesy purple vinyl tablecloths. Costco for snacks in addition to the food served there; I stopped off on the way to the ceremony and picked up some additional food and fresh flowers. Ex's wife took the four bouquets of fresh I bought and added them to some silk ferns I'd rented with wicker stands to make some sort of an altar and it turned out to look beautiful; I bought an arch at Michael's and it turned out not half-bad for a dive paneled half-way up in '70s wood and with a large old-school tv sitting in a corner (which I covered in lace, tyvm.) We rearranged the tables, covered them in purple, made runners from white netting with votives and gemstones and small floral centerpieces I picked up at Costco for $20 a pop. Her friend (a trained baker) made a lovely cake for her. Her son was adorable. "Mom's last name is Xxxx now but mine isn't changing. It's still going to be First Middle Last. We talked about it last night." The worst flub was that they forgot the ring bearer pillow (so pretty and I bought it on Amazon but darn it for forgetting my pretty eggplant ring bearer pillow); they used a small stack of napkins tied like a gift for the pillow for GS's most important role. The girs were flower girls after all and they raced down the aisle; it was hilariously adorable.
Vows said, paper signed, dinner served an onto bowling. It was fun and I hadn't done it in ages. I really should pick it up again. I suck. Daughter wore her dress to bowl. It was adorable. Grand#1 spent the evening flirting with all the boys and getting them them to roll the ball for her and knock down some pins. She even asked a random dude in the next lane and HE DID IT. Hilarious! I'm going to have some major trouble in a few years, I think. I paid for the hotel room for Friday and Saturday night and it looked like a tornado ran through it; I'd also bought the "romance" package with flower petals and all that cheesy crap and housekeeping couldn't set it up because they'd told them to DND. So we pulled the room together, put the champagne on the nightstand and got it picked up and set up. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to stop off at the store and buy her some footy pajamas like I was going to but it worked out well and they returned to a somewhat picked up and cleaned up room. Score for Mom.
I'll have to dig up my camera and post pictures. Hopefully my little P&S is in my camera bag with my phone because I didn't see it in the room last night and it wasn't in my suitcase.