After Wedding Blues

So, I got married. I never thought it would happen to me. I never thought I would find someone who would want to spend the rest of their life with me. But, God miraculously designed someone that was just stupid enough to take on that challenge. Just kidding. Norm is great. My grandma thinks he should be awarded sainthood for agreeing to put up with me. I tend to agree with her. So step one is taken care of... Finding someone to love for the rest of my life.
Step 2 is planning a wedding. That had it's own share of heart aches and head aches, but you hope that when all is said and done it will have all been worth it.
My what a stupid way to look at things.
Don't get me wrong, there were TONS of things about my wedding day that I would not change. Passing a Budweiser around with my family in memory of my uncle Tom who suddenly passed away last year. Getting to see my sister and best friends who all moved away last year. And most of all getting to hear Norm tell me he loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me was the best one of those things, and after all, that is what the day is all about. Over all the day was a success. When all was said and done, Norm and I were husband and wife. Mission accomplished.
But now it's two months later, and I am finally starting to hear stories of things, and witness things for my self that make that day in part very sad and sometimes quite humiliating.
First off... I found out my dad was married and didn't tell any of us until my wedding day. That in and of itself wasn't so bad, it was a month later when we got the photos from OUR wedding, and found that they had taken their own set off wedding pictures at my wedding with my wedding photographer. I started getting comments from people who were looking at the images like "Who's wedding was it?" and "Did you and your dad get married on the same day?" and even more angering was the comments "Is she your mother?" This angers me because there were only about 5 different pictures (out of 800) that actually had my mother in them. My dad and his surprise wife had their own mini shoot and my mom is only in about 5 shots. Even more upsetting to me was finding out that their wedding shoot was happening while I was supposed to be in the garden getting photos with my bridesmaids and Family before the wedding. By the time they were done with their shoot guests were already arriving and I never got to go into the garden and get shots with my family pre-wedding with out Norm. So, Norm has tons of shots with him and his parents pre-wedding and I have none. My mother couldn't even talk to me about it for a couple months, and I couldn't talk to her about it because we are both so hurt at the seemingly HUGE gap in the photos. I love my mother very much and I am so sad and heartbroken that she is hardly in any of my wedding photos. The photos are not an accurate representation of the day. They are very lopsided.
Second... I found out that the place I had paid $20 per person for a host bar, was charging my guests $8.00 for certain drinks. If my guest wanted a Jack and Coke, that would be $8.00. What is that? I paid $20 a person (an extra $3,200 total) so my guests could enjoy themselves and not have to pay for their drinks. They ran out of beer, AND they had no orange juice for mixing drinks. The only juices they had to mix drinks with was cranberry juice, and sweet and sour. That's it. What kind of bar is that? I paid that much extra for a bar and they have the audacity to charge $8.00 for a jack and coke, run out of beer, and not have juice to mix. And the best part is half of my guests were not drinkers.
Third... I had some guests that apparently were not very thrilled about what they ordered when they RSVP'd. So they changed their minds. Unfortunately, they all decided to change their orders to the most expensive meal. I only paid for a certain amount of each of the 4 dish options. And their change of mind lead to issue number 4.
Fourth... The restaurant ran out of food. When a guest would change their mind about their order, the server would go get the steak for them. Sadly, by the time the servers got to the last tables, there was no steak left for the people who had RSVP'd for them. They ended up with either chicken dinners or the vegetarian dishes. And this leads to number 5
Fifth... The food I paid for was not what guests received. The kids meal option was Chicken Strips with French fries. The strips came instead with garlic whipped mashed potatoes. Kids want french fries not fancy schmancy mashed potatoes. The steak was supposed to be served topped with wild mushrooms and spicy onion rings. Neither of those two things were there. It was just a piece of meat with a side of mashed potatoes and asparagus. NOT what I or my guest's ordered. Again very upsetting.
Sixth... They had misplaced, on the wedding day, the pens for our photograph sign board. When my bridesmaids noticed and asked where the pens were, the owner of the restaurant told them that I didn't give him pens. (I gave them to him that day in a bag and said "these are the pens for the sign board and some extra coloring books for the kids") When my sister said, "No, I was right there when my sister handed them to you earlier." He accused her of lying. My sister then insisted and he said he would look for them. So he instead grabbed a bunch of ball-point pens. WHAT!!! Ball-point pens for signing a photograph matte? Fortunately for him, he miraculously found the pens I brought him. Those were not the only things to go missing
Seventh... They misplaced one of our unity sand vases. I still don't have it as of this blog post. I have been to the restaurant several times to retrieve it, and the owner is never there, and the staff can never find it. The owner is not returning my calls.
Eighth... The behavior of some of my family was appalling. I don't know if any of you are aware that one of my BIGGEST pet-peeves is people cutting into lines. It makes me so angry. I don't think that any thing could be more rude than thinking you are better than everyone else standing in line and you therefore do not have to do it. My family had just recently been to another wedding where the father of the bride pulled an "I'm the father of the bride and I paid for this wedding so I don't have to stand in line" He cut right into the food line to get seconds when the people standing in line hadn't even gotten their firsts yet. This was the major topic of joking for my family for quite a while. How could someone be so rude to their own guests? My family still laugh and joke about that horrid behavior. Well, apparently my own dad could be that rude. He pulled the exact same line to cut in front of everyone in line for the bar. I would have crawled under the table at that point, fortunately I was not there and didn't get to witness it.
I have to say. I found these things out slowly and over time and most people were nice enough to never mention these things too me. But I did find them out and I am very pissed off about them. You only get one chance to get it right, and there is no going back to fix these things. I am most sad about the pictures. The rest is just stuff that happens, but when you compile it all, it just makes me angry. You work so hard and put so much time and energy into making a day that will be memorable for you and your guests and to have so many things go wrong is just unacceptable. But as I said earlier the day was an over all success. I am married to the best man in the world. And now we get to start our life together. That's really all I could ask for.