The week before the wedding, moments

There was some family time, some alone time (and then together time!) in the kitchen, craft projects to finish, an impromptu night out with my ladies and time with our beloved out of town friends who served as our officiant and witness.

{succulents, short and stout}

{wedding cookie baking}

{napkins packed}

{instrument of destruction}

{girls night}

{mandatory lunch break}

My goal all along was to finish everything by Monday evening. Our house guests would arrive on Wednesday, so I would have all day Tuesday to relax and regroup.

Uh, no. Life totally took over.

I realized we were a little behind on Saturday and decided to beg a friend's cleaning lady to come take care of our apartment. Best decision ever. I know that our friends wouldn't judge my unscrubbed bathtub, but it was so nice to have everything cleaned much more thoroughly than I would have done.

I made 12 batches of cookie dough on Monday afternoon and then the weather promptly heated up and I couldn't bear to turn on the oven. I was finally forced to do so (and finagle my officiant into helping me shape cookies) on Thursday when I realized that we'd already printed the dessert menus and it would be a huge pain if I just decided to forget about the cookies altogether. Yes, I realize that people would have been able to figure it out even if the menus were inaccurate, but I couldn't stand that. And it seemed sort of wasteful to just leave my fridge filled up with unused cookie dough.

We were definitely working right up until Thursday evening, although not too frantically, until I gave myself my second horrible glue gun burn of the week. It was disgusting and took a huge chunk of skin off my middle finger. I still had a massive hangover from Wednesday night which I finally realized was probably partially genuine hangover and partially a low level panic attack. At 9 pm we realized we hadn't eaten (or, more importantly, fed our guests) so we took a break and went out for sushi.

I was fairly stressed out on Friday just because there was so much stuff to remember and I was so worried I would forget something. Something clicked after the rehearsal on Friday afternoon and I let go a lot. I mean, I still obsessively decided to hand iron all our painted tablecloths on Friday night, but I at least prioritized and spent the most time on the ones I cared the most about. Progress, right?