Though I was incredibly tired from my long drive and still grumpy from the night’s events, my mood had been elevated by the issuance of our marriage license. But let’s face it, I was still in “fake it until you make it” mode.

Mr. DG and I made it to the wedding site, and I was ready to stop faking it and start working. When we arrived on site, we looked for the owner so that we could settle in and get to work. He wasn’t there. There was however, a distressed man also looking for the site owner. Apparently, this man’s child was having an allergic reaction to something… Well, at least I could help with that!

We called the owner’s numbers and waited for a while, and I could have gotten really steamed again… but instead, I decided to get to work. We unloaded all of our craft boxes right in the middle of all the cabins (with no access to anything indoors) and just got down to work. So much for unpacking, organizing or collecting our thoughts!

I started working on chalkboards—a job that was going to take the better part of my next two days. And I erased. And it was scary. And there was paint… and sharpie on them! It was a mess. I whipped out the krylon and resurfaced the seating chart board. I had bought all of the supplies that the hive suggested, including the miracle pens suggested by August15bride. Thank goodness!

An hour or so later, Mr. DG’s family started trickling on site. I just knew that they knew about my meltdown and I couldn’t bear to look them in the eye. Luckily, Mr. DG’s sister in law (who I had never met before) figured me out in 2 seconds flat. She asked me when was the last time I ate. All of a sudden I realized I hadn’t eaten since the day before. In the afternoon! No wonder I was so crabby! Sheesh… So she fed me, and now ranks as one of my favorite people in the world!

We were all hard at work, and finally about 3 hours later the owner showed up and said, “Oh sorry if you were waiting. A man’s gotta eat lunch you know.” Grr… but I’ll get to a vendor review on the site way later!

Anyway, the day ended up being a colliegial collaboration between us and Mr. DG’s family. My family showed up and some friends showed up and it was a great day after all!

I worked on chalkboards. Mr. DG’s family cooked food. Friends and family played catch… and I got to catch up with some of our favorite friends from Seattle. I was stinking tired!

By the time the sun went down, I had one chalkboard completed (the menu board) and the other was at least drawn (but not inked). I knew with all the things planned for Friday, I’d be cutting it really, really close to get everything done :o!

Taste of the honeymoon

Today I wish I was back in Glacier National Park!

Jen photos

My friend Jen took some great photos with our camera. I thought I'd share a couple since they don't feature on Annie's blog. Nice second shooting, Jen!

recap part 3

The kindly housemate took my note saying do not disturb me very seriously. Apparently she fended off several calls wondering where I was. She even made sure that Fiance didn’t wake me up when he dropped by! I woke up at about 9:30 and felt like I never wanted to get out of bed and face the world. I was still totally in a funk and knew I’d need to get out of it.

I called fiance and we discussed the marriage license that we would need to get that day. I had done all the research about cost, what to bring and where to obtain it. The only hitch? Do to the economy, the local office had shut down. It seemed that the nearest office was an hour and a half away and only available by appointment! There were no appointments available for that day.

Fiance came over and we tried to brainstorm. I looked him in the eye and asked, “Is somebody trying to tell us not to get married?” Seriously, so far it had been roadblock after roadblock. Thinking outside the box, we started looking at municipalities outside the Tahoe area to obtain a license. Finally, here came our first ray of sunshine. There was a no-appointment necessary place at the Nevada County office, which was actually closer than the other one. Score one for the DGs!

It was already hotter than blazes at about 10 am, and I was thinking “Uh oh, is it going to be this hot on wedding day? I might not do so well in this kind of heat!”

We got to the office, handed in our paperwork and felt a little triumphant for a minute. I should never feel triumphant…

The county clerk informed me that my driver’s license had just expired. (I had not received a notice, nor was I aware that this was the case prior to leaving Seattle). Not only was I not sure that she would issue our license, but we were far from home and planning to drive to our honeymoon. This was not good!

Luckily, I had my passport with me and my old California Driver’s license. The kind official decided not to make a big deal about the expired license. I could have just hugged her!

Then, the county clerk told us about the Name Equality Act in California. To avoid having to file a court order to change names, we were going to have to decide right then and there what we wanted to do with our names. Now, we had talked about this extensively (because I wanted to keep my last name), but we also decided that we wouldn’t need to officially decide until after we were married. All of a sudden we went from having all the time in the world to having about 3 minutes to decide what we wanted to do. Yipes!

Due to professional issues, I was pretty committed to keeping my last name. But, both of us felt that we wanted to do something to acknowledge our new partnership. We had discussed taking his adorable last name as a middle name… but that didn’t really solve the problem, since it didn’t reflect any change in his status. We asked the clerk, “Can we do anything we want?” She affirmed this and our eyes lit up. I could take his name as a middle name and he could take my name as a second middle name! It felt egalitarian and transformational at the same time. It was an option we could both live with ☺

License in hand, we headed to the wedding site for the first time. At last, I felt like the fates couldn’t stop this marriage from happening. Now, about those chalkboards…

We're back!

We've traveled over 3,500 miles, suffered a flat tire, chalkboard fail, dress hi-jinx, gotten married, gotten honeymooned, and have generally been head over heels for each other.