Give my daughter the wedding of her dreams.

Two weddings; three receptions; two new sons; first family vacation with everyone at Disneyland . . . 2012 was quite the year around here!

I’ve got one more daughter of marriageable age, so I’ll leave this goal on my list, but I’ve already accomplished it twice.

So the fiancee was working with his dad for the summer, travelling all around the country, so Middle Daughter was left to do most of the wedding work on her own. Her sister helped her by looking up places to check out, and went with her to see them.

After several tries, they found a great little place, half of a duplex, near school and big sister, and for a good rental price. The landlady was super nice, too. This looked promising. She was to go back the next day to sign the lease.

However, that very night, the landlady called her and said the deal was off. She had gotten a call from some relative, saying that great uncle /Herbert/ had died and great aunt /Harriet/ now needed some place to live for free and didn’t SHE have that little duplex?

Extreme hubris, but the lady relented, leaving my sweet daughter without a place to live (and herself without the rental income). So the search continued.

Just a few days later, she found another nice enough place; the basement of a family’s house. The rent was actually cheaper than the duplex and the location was fine. Not quite as close to school or big sister, but doable. The mom of the family was in charge. She seemed nice and was excited to rent to the newlyweds. So they signed a lease and when Fiancee got back to town, he moved in to the new apartment. My daughter lived with her sister until the wedding.

So they’ve been there 6 months now and have been through the ringer with privacy issues and heating issues, and the possibility that the house wasn’t zoned for renters, but things have settled down and they seem pretty happy in their tiny little cute First Apartment.

Eldest Daughter and I Hooked... Them... UP!

This wedding required 2 receptions; one in Utah for friends of the bride and groom, and one in AZ for the friends and relatives of both families.

This meant the couple would wind up in the Valley of the Hot, Hot Sun in the middle of August. We decided to work with that. Eldest Daughter found a screamin’ deal at one of the resorts in Scottsdale (22 miles north of my house) for $35 a night. Well, yeah, because no one wants to come to Scottsdale in August! But that’s not all. The resort’s parent company added another whole week at any of their resorts in the USA for $139—not per night, but for another whole week. I think the kids plan to use it for an anniversary getaway to some mountain hideaway. So we got a great deal.

But…they would still have to spend a week in 110+ temperatures, and you can only spend so much time in the pool or in the hotel room, even if you are on your honeymoon.

That’s where I came in… no, not to the hotel room. No need anyway, they came to me. Four times! They came to get food. They came to get swimwear. They came to get the gift certificates I got them for a couple’s massage at a local spa. I also sprung for several visits to the best gelato place in America, and a romantic gondola ride at a different resort in Scottsdale that has a shady river winding around the property. Plus, I gave them a wad of spending money, just to make their vacation time more fun.

We had driven up to Utah and they flew down to Arizona, so they actually got here before we did. I asked a friend to pick them up at the airport and take them to my house, where there was a car, filled with gas, that they could use for the week, so they didn’t have to rent one. Added bonus, they only needed one-way plane tickets because we let them drive that car back home after the AZ reception.

Middle Daughter called me one prime-numbered Friday in April of 2012, just to ask me a hypothetical question.

“Just hypothetically speaking, is it a good idea to buy the warranty on a ring?”

“Where are you?” [I am a MOM. Who did she think she was fooling?!]

“We’re at the mall.”

“Yes. It is always a good idea to get the warranty. Always get the warranty.”

They did, and it was a good thing, because her ring ended up being too big and had to be resized after they waited a week to have it sized to begin with.

Both of my new sons wanted to wear their rings during the engagement. Youngest Daughter went with tradition, but Middle Daughter handed the ring over and her beau wore his all summer.

The wedding was on a prime-numbered Friday in August.

For Youngest Daughter’s wedding, I was in charge of so many different things that I had a filing system and a journal, which I went through to come up with each of those entries.

For Middle Daughter, much of the planning was done in another state and reported to me on a daily basis, so I didn’t have to worry about as much day-to-day prep as the first wedding. That’s great, but I’ve noticed a big difference in the way I post about each one.

Perhaps it’s because Middle Daughter’s Vintage theme was so strong. Everything fit together perfectly, so as I write about one thing, something else just naturally fits in the conversation, easy to be included without writing separate stories.

Writing it all down now gives me nice memories for both weddings.

It was 8:30 at night and the only stars were the ones coming off these sparklers. Thanks, Daylight Savings Time…something we don’t have to deal with in Arizona.

No covert ops to acquire sparklers for this wedding…it was a month after the biggest fireworks day of the year, so we stocked up.

I remembered my shoes this time and made sure no one was out there barefoot, so there were no injuries, and after the bride and groom left, most everyone went back inside and sat around talking, eating, dancing and having a good time. I especially loved it because my best friend who moved up there a few years ago came and we got a nice chance to visit for a while. It was great. :)

I love being a florist, especially when it affords me a chance to give my daughters such wonderful bridal bouquets.

This gorgeous vintage bouquet contains pink ranunculuses, peach stock, yellow billie balls, peach spray roses, dusty miller, variegated pittosporum, leatherleaf, and a few strands of vintage pearls wound into bling.

She loved it. Her sisters carried smaller bouquets to match. I used the same flowers for the corsages and the groom’s boutonniere. The other boutonnieres consisted of two billie balls, with the stems wearing peach bowties—so cute!

A dainty cap of Russian netting, anchored to a beautiful ivory flower with a crystal center, and attached as a barrette to the left side of her head. It looked so elegant with her vintage dress and she was most appreciative of my time and talents. Too bad the photographer didn’t get one single close-up picture of it. uuuurg.

The week that Youngest Daughter and I drove up to Utah for dress shopping, and searched everywhere for bridesmaids’ dresses, one of the places we searched was Sears. That shows how desperate we were. I don’t think Sears even sells dresses, at least that one didn’t.

BUT! In the apparel section of this particular Sears was a clearance shelf, holding several mini potpie makers—like those flip-top sandwich bakers, but with separate holes to bake 4 little potpies at a time. The price was marked all the way down to SEVEN DOLLARS EACH! Wow. We EACH got one. That was four of us, so when the wedding came along, and we had four potpie makers going at once . . . well, we blew the circuits and had to run only 2 on a circuit. But we did have a couple places we could work, so we could still whip them out super fast.

I make, seriously, the very best stew in the Universe, so my dear daughter wanted it at her wedding! I made chicken stew for the Utah reception and beef stew for the Arizona reception. We filled the potpies with the stew and people couldn’t get enough! They just kept thanking us for the good dinner. It was great! :)

Middle daughter did not want the classic three-tiered wedding cake, but she did still use the cake stand her dad built.

The top level of the stand held the cake topper, a hand-built figurine that Middle Daughter sculpted of herself with her groom, dancing. The little statues actually looked like the real people. It was breathtaking! It stood on a battery-operated turntable and rotated so guests could see all sides of it.

We filled the lower level of the stand (and the surrounding table) with cupcakes, both white and chocolate, each one frosted with either peach or raspberry frosting (to match the peach and pink tablecloths!) and topped with either a slice of fresh peach, or a freshly picked raspberry. We picked the raspberries ourselves, the day before the wedding, at a farm in Mapleton, Utah. They were oh, so delicious!

The bride and groom wanted a cheesecake to cut into for their “first taste of married life”, so we picked one up at Sam’s Club and put it on the middle level of the stand. It looked really cool with different shapes and textures on each of the three levels.

Besides the cupcakes, we made hundreds of bird-shaped cookies. I made a cookie cutter out of plumber’s tape and Youngest Daughter made her best cookies. We glazed them with melted pink or peach frosting.

This wedding actually called for two receptions; one in Utah, for the bride and groom’s friends, and one in Arizona for both families’ friends and relatives. We hired Eldest daughter’s roommate, who is an aspiring caterer, to make the cookies and cupcakes for the Utah reception. Middle Daughter made several bird-shaped cookie cutters – for her guest favors, as well as for the cookies – and I used one of the ceramic birds as a pattern to make my cookie cutter in Arizona. I love how weddings, when done properly, always turn out to be a group effort. It’s amazing.

^{But still…three wedding receptions in one year…no wonder we don’t have any money!}