A wedding and a flooded road

I know you all have been patiently awaiting this blog post but it took a bit for things to settle down enough for me to form a coherent thought (which is usually fairly difficult for me anyway, yea yea yea I know).  Don and I got married on September 21 on a lovely day in West Virginia. I’d love to say things went off with out a hitch and for many people who were there you would almost think it had. Let’s start at the begining.

Don and I drove up to his parents in Webster Springs WV, on Friday after I had worked a 12 hour night shift. I figured no problem I’ll just sleep in the car on the way up. Yea, that didn’t happen. I was super, super car sick the entire 6 hour drive. Good news was, the Goody’s in Summersville did indeed have his tux. Why am I supprised by this? Well there seemed to be some confusion in the lines of communication. Don went to the Goody’s here in Southern Pines, got measure and had a rush put on his tux so it would be there in time. They told him it would be at the Goody’s in WV by Saturday. Great! Then at some point in the week someone was told it wasn’t for sure it would get there, or something, I heard that part all second hand. So that tux got cancelled and Don was going to try to get one down here. Because of his work schedule he wasn’t able to get in to get fitted at all….Great, I’ll standing in front of my family with some guy in his undapants. I called the Goody’s in Summersville to try to figure out what in god’s name was going and to my suprise they already had his tux, there in the store. I asked what happened and they told me they had overnight shipped it to make sure it would get there in time, but that someone had called and cancelled it the same day it had been ordered…..I’m still not sure what happened but I’m just got we got it. The rest of the trip for us was uneventful. Mom and the rest of the gang had made it to thier hotel in Indiana with out event. Oh yea, but no one had a cell phone signal in the hills….no one…….

By Satureday you could kind of start to tell everyone was starting to feel the stress of things. Late nights getting this done, trying to organize family coming from all over the place. My family made it into Webster without much trouble and from the hotel we went out to the park to help with the set up. Now I don’t know how many of you have been to West Virginia but those roads aren’t flat and they aren’t straight, so just because something looks close on the map, it may still take you an hour to get there. From Webster Springs to the park was about a 45 minute drive for us not used to driving in those mountains. Don’s mom had rented one of the cabins at the park for Satureday and Sunday night and then had rented us one of the smaller cabins for Sunday night. So we go to the park to help with setting up and we get the pavillion all set up and what not and go up to the cabin to see what needed to be done up there. As we are coming up to the cabin, Don’s sister comes out and tells her husband that she needs him in there like now. A couple minutes later Kevin comes out with a small snake in a dust pan….Yea a baby snake…..According to folks in there it fell out the damn ceiling!!!! Guess what….I hate snakes……The worst news of the week came shortly there after. Don’s uncle had been in an accident and killed in Florida that afternoon. Here is a link to the story.  Needless to say we kind of wondered if we should postpone the wedding but everyone agreed to keep on with it. Many of Don’s family were unable to come due to Michael’s death but the number that did come was suprising and really ment a lot to us.

Sunday dawned a beautiful day in Webster Springs, the weather channel had said it was supposed to be 75 and Sunny! We didn’t have a rehersal the night before with everything that happened so we were just kind of shootin from the cuff, which didn’t go real well with my type A personality as many of you can guess. I spent some of the morning trying to get a hold of the gal that was supposed to be doing my hair to find out for sure what time she was going to be at the park. Don’s mom had talked to her and the gal said she would be at the park but Glada couldn’t remember what time she had said. I left a message at her house and shop and still couldn’t get a hold of her. It was starting to get kind of late so we headed out to the park. We got out there and it was a flurry of activity the pavilion looked amazing and the cabin Don’s mom had rented was packing wtih people decorating the cake and getting things finished up to take down to the pavillion. I decieded I would get dressed in the cabin Don’s mom had rented for us to use that night. The cleaning gals were right across the road cleaning one of the other cabins so I asked them how I could get a key. They told me to hang out by the office and the ranger would be back soon. So I drive down to the office and waited….and waited…and waited. I waited long enough the Don and Tom showed up at the pavillion which was right across the dang street! I went back up and asked if one of the cleaning gals would let me in and I would worry about getting the key later. One of them was nice enough to walk me up to the cabin but on the way there informs me that it kinda smells like a dead rat in the cabin and that we may want to think about switching cabins…..great…… I deciede to sniff for myself. She let me in and it really just smelled like musty wood, probably from the fire wood that was in the cabin. I didn’t really have time to take a look a round so we popped open a couple windows and left. I went back to Glada’s cabin to get stuff together and after about half hour or so one of the other gals walked up to our cabin to use the shower and informed me that it was locked again….wonderful. Ok I’ll just get dressed where I am then. The girl who was supposed to do my hair never showed….. The cabin finally cleared out a bit I quick threw my hair back, pinned in some bobby pins and the decerative ones I had, and called it good. Got dressed and Tom, and Haley (Don’s niece) and I hopped in the van and head down to the pavilion. From here things went smooth as glass. I didn’t trip on the rocks or nothing! After the ceremony we did all the pictures and let people eat. There really wasn’t a reception people ate, mingled and we cut the cake and that was about it. No one was really in the mood for dancing and since we had it on a Sunday afternoon people had to get back home to get to work Monday morning. The whole thing had wrapped up by about six or so. I’m thinking awesome we can get cleaned up and still be able to watch the football game (Packers vs. Cowboys). Don and I go back to our cabin so I can get changed out of my dress. Whilst I’m changing Don goes in the bathroom and guess what he finds. A DEAD MOUSE. EW EW EW EW EW EW EW. Ok after the baby snake and the dead mouse this city, yankee girl is offically freaked out!! I pile my bag all up on top of one another so I don’t have any little visitors in them and go out to the car while Don disposes of our little gift from nature. We stop down at his mom’s cabin, tell her about the mouse and head back in to Webster to watch the game. Packers lost…..figures. After the game we go next door to Don’s cousins house and chill there for a bit, and leave to head back to the park at about one in the morning. We get back to the cabin and its almost two. You would expect all the other cabins to be dark that time of night, but I was dead sure we left the outside light at our cabin on. We get to the door and Don’s mom and Aunt Judy had put a poster on our outside door. We didn’t really see it but we knew it was there because they had covered up the door handle. We go in side and the lights won’t turn on….yea no power. I’m at the stage you call freaking out. It’s pitch black, there was a dead mouse in here and I hear scurring! I turned to Don and said I’m not staying here. I’ll write a note so hopefully your mom gets her money back but I refused to stay here. So two in the morning we are loading the car up to head back into town. Just as we were pulling away from the cabin the lights all come back on and Don asked if I’d rather just stay since the power was back and I was like ummm no….drive. I wrote a little note to the park ranger informing them that we didn’t stay in the cabin, and let him no about our little guest and the fact that there as no power and that they should refund the money spent for it (those cabins were like $125 a night….) We got back to his parents about 3am and both just crashed. How’s that for a wedding night! It turns out that the park refunded the money for both cabins thank goodness. In hindsight though we had a beautiful day spent with family and friends with a little extra adventure thrown in!

The day after the wedding we just hung out at Don’s parents house so our families could get to know one another. We sat on the porch, ate, drank a little, shared stories, that kind of stuff. It was nice and the weather was wonderful. Mom, Tom, Grandma, and Grandpa left to head to North Carolina about noon on Tuesday and Don and I left Webster Springs a little after 6 that night. I wasn’t car sick at all  on the way home thank god.

This has gotten wordy enough for one entry I’ll save the flooded road story and the rest of my week with my  family for another post. But here’s the link to some of the pictures from the wedding. I only have a small amount of them. Don’s mom is going to get a hold of everyones camera’s or disks and compile them all and send them to me so once I get those I’ll have many more pictures to share! Click here to take a look!