All wedding'ed out

Maybe it’s just because I’m at that age, but there seems to be an unusual amount of wedding invitations coming in the mail this year. Until a few years ago, it had been years since I had been to a wedding. Then my uncle got married, then older high school and college friends started having weddings, then (scary) people my own age began tying the knot.

Since February, Nate and I have averaged a wedding a month. It was impossible to make it to all with both of us having crazy work schedules, so we’re still four cards behind in our gift giving. If you are one of those four, I hope to have them in the mail shortly along with the thank you notes for baby gifts.

Our busiest month was not June, as tradition would predict, but September. This year, we had four invitations on three different Saturdays. We were lucky with the first; it was practically in our backyard in the Edgar-Stratford area. The rest were a bit more of a challenge.

Wedding #2 was in the Twin Cities, which is always a hassle to drive in when you’re used to driving for miles without seeing anyone on the country roads. To compound the problem, we were either following or leading a group of cars every time we went somewhere. Luckily we were only kind of lost once, but found our way back to the hotel after winding through the asphalt maze of exits and overpasses.

This past weekend, one of my family member’s joined the society of wedded bliss. Since Nate and I both were invited to stand up in the wedding, we missed wedding #4 which was held up near Rice Lake. Though it would have been nice to make it to both, Milwaukee is quite a hike from Rice Lake.

Cedarberg was our destination for the weekend. Once again, we found ourselves following tail lights from place to place. This time my brother was the one leading. Since we got a late start from the hotel to the rehearsal, he felt the need to drive like it was a stolen Grand Marquis. What he didn’t realize is by trying to make up time, he made the rest of us even later by zipping through a yellow light with four cars trying to follow him. Luckily, the three of us left behind navigated our way there, but not without irritating an impatient priest by being 15 minutes late.

The following morning was a flurry of packing, getting hair done, slapping on some make-up, and taking way too many pictures with every possible combination of the bride and groom with members of the wedding party, family and friends.
At the end of the day, my new sister-in-law asked if I learned anything about planning a wedding. I didn’t have to think to much about it. After all the shopping before the trip, traveling, clothes fitting, hair pulling, mother-daughter arguing, money spent and thinking you had everything together just to realize you’d forgotten something very important, I’ve had enough weddings for a while.

“Yes,” I said. “We’re going to Vegas.”