A year ago today, my passably okay brother married my amazingly wonderful sister-in-law. Since the first year is the paper anniversary, I decided to give them a picture.
I got the inspiration for this from a layout by Jennifer McGuire. The first thing I thought when I saw it was that it would fit perfectly with this picture.
Don’t they look wonderful together? I have a lot of fun memories from their wedding, one of which, it seems certain people don’t remember. So I’ll retell it here.
Cream-Puff-Gate
As per tradition, my parents threw a lovely rehearsal dinner for the bride and groom. For dessert, my mother planned to have trays on each table with a variety of sweets. The centerpiece of these trays would be cream puffs, which have long been a favorite of my brothers’ friends.
The wedding took place in Joy’s home town, which meant that carloads of Stuff had to be transported from my parents’ home in Maryland to the wedding site in Pennsylvania. My parents had driven up a couple days early, and my sister, 2 brothers, and grandparents were driving up together that Friday afternoon.
Mom had left detailed instructions for what to bring with them, the most important item being The Cream Puffs. There was a specific bag of them that needed to be packed in the cooler a specific way. No joke. My sister, Laura, was designated Person In Charge.
But, Laura was running late from work and my grandparents were all in a tizzy over whether 8 hours would be enough time to make the 4 hour trip. So they packed the cream puffs, and as soon as my sister got to the house they herded her to the car. Laura, being easily annoyed, threw up her hands and said, “fine, but if the cream puffs are ruined it’s your fault, not mine.” Do you see where this is going?
Unsurprisingly, the crew arrived in Pennsylvania, and within minutes it was discovered that they had brought the wrong cream puffs, and now there wouldn’t be enough to go around. I love my mom, but in times of stress, she tends to focus more on blaming than on problem solving. So she spent the next 45 minutes yelling at everyone who crossed her path over what an unholy disaster this was.
Of course, I had been delegated the responsibility of doing the final preparations for the dinner while everyone was at the rehearsal. This included–you guessed it–putting the cream puffs on the dessert trays. My explicit instructions were to place 8-10 cream puffs on each tray, depending on the number of people at each table. In an attempt to calm my mother down, I offered a solution. The conversation went something like this:
Me: This is not as big a deal as you think it is. There are still plenty of desserts. I’ll just put 5 cream puffs on each tray and no one will even notice.
Mom: No, we have enough cream puffs to have one for each person.
Me: So there’s not a problem.
Mom: Yes there is.
Me: …
Mom: I wanted you to put out 2 cream puffs for each person.
Me: You told me 1
Mom: I meant 2.
Me: So what you’re telling me is, I would have gone and set up–exactly per your instructions–and you would have come in and had a fit because I didn’t read your mind.
Mom: Probably.
For the record, the trays were hardly large enough for the cream puffs we did have, and they did not all get eaten.
But other than that, the rehearsal dinner and the wedding went off without a hitch.
Recipe:
Photo corner and Bookplate: Tim Holtz Idea-ology
Ribbon: Offray and Celebrate It
Paper: Recollections Metallic
Fonts: Special Type from dafont.com and Edwardian Script