Back in September I posted the first installment in the saga of the Michigan wedding that friend of the Dish Courtney Hammons had the pleasure of participating in as a bridesmaid rather than the highly qualified wedding planner that she is. Well I finally wrangled the rest of the story out of her.

Let’s see if you find bits of this as funny as I do. The commentary at the end is purely my own; sometime an outsider sees thing a little differently. At least there weren’t any bomb scares at the wedding. Read Part I here and Part II here

Wedding Day – Sept 15^th

7:30am and my mom is knocking on my hotel room door – I am being told that it is time to go get ready for a 5pm ceremony. Seriously what is wrong with this picture?¹ So out I go in my powder blue sweat suit (that matches my mom, sister and all the other bridesmaids!!!)² Once at the house of the parent’s of the bride the fun begins! I guess when you are doing hair and make-up on 18 people you got to start some time.³ Mom is first so that she can go back to the hotel and take care of my niece. It’s amazing that even when she get’s her hair done it looks just like she did it. Mom is back to the hotel with my sister and I settle in for a day of lounging around. By 1pm everyone is done with hair and make-up and we begin the task of getting everyone dressed. All the dresses are hung alphabetically (did I tell you we had to ship our dresses ahead of time)⁴ Some dresses are to big and others are to small but in the end everyone is in their dress and ready to help the bride put on her one of a kind bridal gown. She looks gorgeous and is so happy to be marrying my brother. The flowers arrive and I all can say is please consider the size and weight when choosing bouquets! The bride’s bouquet came in at 10lbs can you imagine that for the next 10 hours.⁵ Pictures went without incident at the house and once everyone was loaded into the 2 limos and the Bentley off to the ceremony. A beautiful ceremony it was but the pictures afterwards took FOREVER! Not only were we a hour late to the reception we somehow managed to miss the sunset shot. Now let me take a moment and explain the reception one room was for dinner and the other room was for the band and dancing. So we have everyone enter the dancing room for announcements, first dance (which the band did not know!!) and the father daughter dance. We than move everyone (250 plus people) to the dinner room and than towards the end of dinner we ask everyone back to the dancing room for the Horah and the mother son dance! Anyone else see some challenges here!⁶ Well that’s it! After a year of planning, parties and excitement it was all over in a matter of 8 hours! Off to Belize went the bride and groom. And back to Tennessee came my husband and me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1. Do you have any idea how exhausted everyone is going to be by the end of this day? Sure the bride and groom are off to sleep it off in Belize but the rest of the world has to get back to their real lives.
2. Please, please tell me they did not have “Bridesmaid” embroidered across the butt. Please.
3. Ok if you subtract the two mothers and the bride that leaves 15 attendants. What! you asked your entire sorority to be brides maids???
4. I don’t even know where to start. Hung alphabetically? OK then, that takes being organized to a new level. Add to that the “ship our dresses ahead of time” thing, which was so the mother could install identical bustles and you are bordering on obsessive. Can some one explain to me how long of a train a bridesmaids gown has to have to require that it be bustled?
5. Piece of cake. You only thought that the reason a bride must spend the year before their wedding lifting weights was to tone their arms, it’s really so they can lug around 10 pounds of flowers in addition to the weight of their dress. Never forget that it’s not just a wedding – it’s a marathon. Train, train ,train!!!
6. This is the one that cracks me up. I can only picture this crowd of 250 rising as a single unit and shuffling from room to room, sitting in unison and then repeating again and again. Reminds me a very well dressed, multicolored giant amoeba.

I am glad that Courtney survived with her marvelous sense of humor in tact.

I want to hear your tales of wedding excess, leave them in the comment section so we can all share in the joy.