We have finally arrived! The day before!
My mind was racing to figure out what needed to be done before we left the house and drove down to Chehalis. I woke up around 8ish, got ready and went over to Hobby Lobby and Michaels for some more ribbon (I didn't purchase enough) for our trivia scrolls we were putting at each of the place settings. Rhonda texted me to see if it was an okay time to come over to learn how to take care of our cats for Saturday. I told her I wasn't home but would be home shortly. Ben and his mom were there. She said she would walk over and have Ben help her. I continued with my errand and then went home.
I got home, Rhonda was at the tail end of Ben's cat instructions, and I knew we needed to eat something for breakfast before we got busier. I grabbed the sausage, cut it up, scrambled some eggs and mixed them both together for some sort of an egg/sausage scramble. Willmarth had texted me around 10ish stating that he had made it to Auburn. Ben and I eat it all the time in a pinch. We took a few minutes to eat and go over some last-minute stuff. Mom finally got there, and she helped us go over our inventory and packed up the cars. We had made sure we had everything we needed stuffed into the totes.
Ben and Trish left with a carload of stuff just before 11:30. Mom left to go run some errands in town. We made a grocery list and gave her my debit card. Willmarth arrived at the house around 11:30 in his girlfriend's car. I haven't seen him in person since June 2023 when we originally asked him to be our officiant. Life had changed so much since then and there wasn't enough time on this visit to talk about it. I handed him his Kraken hat; we had gotten it for him as a gift many months ago. He loved it and stated he didn't have a Kraken hat yet and would someday love to go to a game.
I gave him the quick tour of the house...the room he would be staying in, where the bathrooms were, towels, extra blankets, gave him rules on the cats, the itinerary and gave him a house key. I told him if he had any questions to call or text me. He handed me a present and told me a little bit about his day so far.
I finished up with packing the Escape, made one more sweep of the house and told him I was heading down to Chehalis. He said he had to go pick up his allergy meds and some clothes for the ceremony. I told him I would see him down there. We left at around the same time. Nicole and Megan arrived at the barn and asked where I was on my journey. I told them I just left but Ben should be getting there any minute with a carload of stuff.
The drive down was uneventful, and I arrived just after 12:30. I pulled into the parking lot in front of the barn, and I had help unloading my bins and stuff I had in the Escape. Ben and Trish went to go pick up the cake and cupcakes in Onalaska and Josh and Heather picked up the kegs on their way down and showed up just as I got to the barn. The boys dollied them into the bar area and got them set up. Then I heard people were at the Airbnb wondering what room they were in. I drove the Escape over to the house and parked it there. That's where it stayed until Sunday afternoon.
I brought in the rest of my stuff and got out my room assignments. I made trees for everyone with their names on it. I walked around the house putting the trees up so when everyone did finally arrive, they knew where to put their stuff. Ben and I did have to make one alteration because one of the rooms did not have an actual bed for two people in it. I guess it was a good thing my Dad wasn't going to stay the night with us. Everyone got settled in and Megan found a rogue bra from some other gathering behind one of the ottomans. We laughed.
Ben and I took our stuff to the cottage out back past the swimming pool. We chose our sides of the bed, set up our toiletries, hung up our wedding stuff and went back to the main house. I had a bunch of people finish up tying ribbon on the scrolls. I assembled everyone so we can go back over to the barn to start decorating. By 1:30, just about everyone was on the property except for Dad, which didn't surprise me. I knew Doug wasn't going to make it because he had to work, but that was fine.
There were three places we had to decorate, upstairs of the barn, downstairs of the barn and the ceremony area outside. Ben and some of his guys worked on getting the bar area set up downstairs and I was back and forth from the supplies warehouse to the upstairs of the barn to the ceremony are outside. I was constantly being pulled in directions answering questions. We did get into a rhythm and were making great use of our time. It was coming together! Ben and I tried really hard to make it simple, yet, nice to look at. We were also thankful for Kari's decorations in her warehouse because it saved us so much money.
As it got closer to our rehearsal, Ben and I made several trips to the three areas in and around the barn to make certain, we had it decorated how we wanted it. Our friends and family did a great job. Everything looked nice and were in the correct places. Willmarth spent time perfecting his officiant speech and had us, along with our witnesses, sign the documents we needed so we didn't have to do it tomorrow when we were distracted. I was getting worried because Dad wasn't on the property yet and he was needed for our rehearsal walk through.
Mom and Trish went to go get the pizzas from Papa Pete's in Castle Rock. This is what Mom wanted to do so I let her be in charge of that. We both just figured pizza was easy to provide for 20+ people.
Unfortunately, we started the rehearsal walk through late. Dad did end up making it down and Mom and Trish made great time to and from Castle Rock. Our DJ Darin and Barb (Nicole's mom and stepdad) made the trip down after work as well. We pulled the wedding party into the bottom of the barn and went through verbally what we were going to do. I wanted my walk out song to be a surprise but it was okay to ruin the surprise so we could time everything out.
We only had to go through it once, everyone knew their job and everyone's questions were answered. Easy peasy. We spent the next hour or so eating pizza and salad and visiting. As it died down, I wanted to hop in the swimming pool. It was so warm that day running around, making decisions and slowing losing my mind, I needed to relax a bit. I knew the next day was going to be an insanely long, tiring day.
We swam for a while until we got tired of it. Ben and I took quick showers in the cottage, the water tank in there sucked, the water was luke warm and not very powerful. It was a quick shower. I got dressed and went over to the main house to hang out for the rest of the evening. A bunch of us spent some time eating snacks, drinking beer and playing board games. Some of the others, watched movies or went to bed early.
We cleaned up and everyone retreated to their rooms. I told everyone we would see them bright and early the next day. Ben and I retreated to the cottage, made sure everything was ready and spent about an hour working on our choreographed dance. We brushed our teeth and laid down. The bed was surprisingly comfortable.
I am not sure how much sleep I actually got, but it wasn't enough. I couldn't shut my brain off.
Next Adventure: Our Wedding Day!