Snack Hell, The Sea of Humanity...and other wedding weekend stories: Part I
So it's finally done. We're married, and I'm having major issues adjusting to the new last name...but that's for another post. Since things got a bit hectic the week before the wedding and I didn't have time to post, I'm going to have to post what I can remember (surprisingly quite a bit) from the past two weeks.
The first big adventure related to the wedding was spending several days before the wedding with my parents in New York. My parents have never been to New York before other than a very brief trip (less than 24 hours) for the engagement party last year. And even then they never made it into NYC. Let me preface this story by telling you my dad's original plan for these 4 pre-wedding days. The trip would begin with their arrival in New York on Wednesday. They would then rent a car, drive 4 hours to upstate New York, to a town with a population of 76. There, after figuring out what to do about the fact that this town didn't actually have any motels, inns, or even stables in which to sleep, he would drag my mom around a 300 year-old cemetery to do some geneology research on our family. Oh what fun! Then, on Friday, they would make the 4 hour return trip back to New York. This left almost no time to get the last minute necessities taken care of, nor did it allow extra time for emergencies. Come on people, I thought we were all OCD here! Where's the built-in panic time?? So my dad laid out this little itinerary to my mom and to Adrienne, at which point it was immediately vetoed.
The new plan consisted of my parents' arrival on Wednesday afternoon, dinner with the Grossman's that night, a day in Manhattan with me, and then wedding frenzy Friday and Saturday. And let me just give you another clue as to how that little driving trip would have gone in terms of my dad's familiarity with the area- I called him as they were renting their car at JFK airport, and my dad says, "I've got to get this GPS system hooked up so I can navigate here in Manhattan." You heard it here first: Long Island is now part of Manhattan.
The few days before the wedding were really somewhat insane. I finally made it out of the office and up to New York on Wednesday night. The next morning, I sat with my parents as we assembled the welcome bags for our out of town guests. These were possibly the most complicated welcome bags I've ever seen. They had candies, wheat thins, pretzels, two different types of cheese, plastic cutlery for the cheese, a welcome note, and explanation of what guests would be seeing at the wedding, and a map of the Long Island Rail Road. This doesn't sound like too much stuff to put together, except when you add the final ingredient: OCD Mom! I love her to death, but my mom has mastered the art of making simple things twice as difficult as they should be. Rather than buy snack packs of wheat thins, we had to put all of the wheat thins in separate plastic baggies, tie each one with a twist tie, and attach the plastic knife to the bag using the twist tie. Suddenly, I was transported back to Stamp Hell, only this time it was more like Snack Hell. Salt and twistie ties were everywhere!
So here's what the welcome bag assembly consisted of: First, we opened each of the outer bags and stuffed them with tissue paper. And yes, there was a particular way in which we had to stuff the bags: take two pieces of tissue paper, one on top of the other, make a fist in the center of the paper and pull the rest around your arm. Then pull the bag over your arm until your fist touches the bottom of the bag. THIS IS HOW IT MUST BE DONE!!! (I keep imagining a deep, demonic voice saying that phrase). Once filled with tissue paper, we dropped a container of laughing cow cheese into the bags. This helped weigh down the tissue paper and make room for the other snacks, of course. Then in went the Bailey's Irish Cream candies. Loose? Oh, heaven forbid no! They were also tied in little baggies with 5 or 6 candies to each baggie. Thankfully my mom did the candy bagging back in Dallas. Then we added the other cheese (smoked cheddar, I believe). Then the pretzels- two bags each. Thankfully we weren't required to put the pretzels in separate baggies, but I have to ask myself why? Why should pretzels get special treatment? Who cares, I should just be happy that was one less thing to bag. Then came the worst part: bagging the wheat thins. My dad and I had an assembly line created on the table in the hotel room. I opened the little bag, he dumped wheat thins, I tied with twist tie and attached the knife. Then into the welcome bag they went. Then we had to drop in the other paper stuff, like the welcome note, the wedding reference materials and the train schedules. The final step was tying with curly ribbon that my mom spent five days curling and assembling into cute little bows. Other than a short lived laughing cow cheese emergency, everything went fairly smoothly. We were finished by noon, at which time we went to catch the LIRR into the City. Sanity still with me? Check!
The first big adventure related to the wedding was spending several days before the wedding with my parents in New York. My parents have never been to New York before other than a very brief trip (less than 24 hours) for the engagement party last year. And even then they never made it into NYC. Let me preface this story by telling you my dad's original plan for these 4 pre-wedding days. The trip would begin with their arrival in New York on Wednesday. They would then rent a car, drive 4 hours to upstate New York, to a town with a population of 76. There, after figuring out what to do about the fact that this town didn't actually have any motels, inns, or even stables in which to sleep, he would drag my mom around a 300 year-old cemetery to do some geneology research on our family. Oh what fun! Then, on Friday, they would make the 4 hour return trip back to New York. This left almost no time to get the last minute necessities taken care of, nor did it allow extra time for emergencies. Come on people, I thought we were all OCD here! Where's the built-in panic time?? So my dad laid out this little itinerary to my mom and to Adrienne, at which point it was immediately vetoed.
The new plan consisted of my parents' arrival on Wednesday afternoon, dinner with the Grossman's that night, a day in Manhattan with me, and then wedding frenzy Friday and Saturday. And let me just give you another clue as to how that little driving trip would have gone in terms of my dad's familiarity with the area- I called him as they were renting their car at JFK airport, and my dad says, "I've got to get this GPS system hooked up so I can navigate here in Manhattan." You heard it here first: Long Island is now part of Manhattan.
The few days before the wedding were really somewhat insane. I finally made it out of the office and up to New York on Wednesday night. The next morning, I sat with my parents as we assembled the welcome bags for our out of town guests. These were possibly the most complicated welcome bags I've ever seen. They had candies, wheat thins, pretzels, two different types of cheese, plastic cutlery for the cheese, a welcome note, and explanation of what guests would be seeing at the wedding, and a map of the Long Island Rail Road. This doesn't sound like too much stuff to put together, except when you add the final ingredient: OCD Mom! I love her to death, but my mom has mastered the art of making simple things twice as difficult as they should be. Rather than buy snack packs of wheat thins, we had to put all of the wheat thins in separate plastic baggies, tie each one with a twist tie, and attach the plastic knife to the bag using the twist tie. Suddenly, I was transported back to Stamp Hell, only this time it was more like Snack Hell. Salt and twistie ties were everywhere!
So here's what the welcome bag assembly consisted of: First, we opened each of the outer bags and stuffed them with tissue paper. And yes, there was a particular way in which we had to stuff the bags: take two pieces of tissue paper, one on top of the other, make a fist in the center of the paper and pull the rest around your arm. Then pull the bag over your arm until your fist touches the bottom of the bag. THIS IS HOW IT MUST BE DONE!!! (I keep imagining a deep, demonic voice saying that phrase). Once filled with tissue paper, we dropped a container of laughing cow cheese into the bags. This helped weigh down the tissue paper and make room for the other snacks, of course. Then in went the Bailey's Irish Cream candies. Loose? Oh, heaven forbid no! They were also tied in little baggies with 5 or 6 candies to each baggie. Thankfully my mom did the candy bagging back in Dallas. Then we added the other cheese (smoked cheddar, I believe). Then the pretzels- two bags each. Thankfully we weren't required to put the pretzels in separate baggies, but I have to ask myself why? Why should pretzels get special treatment? Who cares, I should just be happy that was one less thing to bag. Then came the worst part: bagging the wheat thins. My dad and I had an assembly line created on the table in the hotel room. I opened the little bag, he dumped wheat thins, I tied with twist tie and attached the knife. Then into the welcome bag they went. Then we had to drop in the other paper stuff, like the welcome note, the wedding reference materials and the train schedules. The final step was tying with curly ribbon that my mom spent five days curling and assembling into cute little bows. Other than a short lived laughing cow cheese emergency, everything went fairly smoothly. We were finished by noon, at which time we went to catch the LIRR into the City. Sanity still with me? Check!
posted by Cindy at 9:00 AM
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