A LONG Week

Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad that I got to spend the week with my best friend. Especially the week before her wedding, which included her birthday:

In this picture she is taking the first of 3 tequila shots on her birthday at "Don Jose"- the Mexican restaurant in Estherville, IA that looks more like a Shakey's buffet than a Mexican restaurant, but yet has impressively authentic food. Much later in the evening she received a phone call from her dad who asked for me three times before she finally handed me the phone in a fit of giggles over the fact that her dad would only talk to me (he wanted to make sure I would be able to get her home! Of course, being the friend that I am, we were already on our way). He told me that the last time she was out that late they brought her home in a bucket...

For most of the week April's mom was referring to me as "the sergeant". April and I made a list on Monday of what we needed to get done for the week and then I made sure we got it done- even when they tried to go to bed Monday night without completing Monday's list!! We took a picture of the list:

One of the toughest things on the list was putting together the favors, which were also the name cards with table assignments. They were little bronze airplane's that were also pencil sharpeners, and we hot glued ribbons to the back of them that had cards with the guest's names and table assignments.

The tables were all named with the aviation letter terms (ie. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta etc.). Needless to say, I can do the entire alphabet now... (Echo, Fox-trot, Gulf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu). April got a kick out of the living room when we spread them all out to be alphabatized... it looked like an airfield!

Not too long after we got started on this task, April's dollar-store glue gun turned into a volcano and she ended up burning her finger so badly that it blistered. Unfortunately, it was on her left hand (bad for wedding ring photos). Fortunately, it was on her middle finger (good for a laugh when she showed it to people.)

Wednesday night we stayed in Chaska, MN (suburb of Minneapolis) at our friend Amber's new house (which, by the way, is AMAZING!) and then Thursday we checked into the impressive St. Paul hotel. This is where things started to go haywire....

We had called the hotel two days before to confirm that we had a room with two beds- so that we could get ready for the wedding there the next day. When we got to our room, we found one king size bed.... argh! We were NOT happy about this and quickly let the front desk know that. Luckily April was quite calm and nice about it (I was very hungry, and so, wisely, no one asked ME to talk to the front desk people!) After a frustrating 20 minutes we were upgraded to a 2500/night suite at no additional charge...

The suite was on the 11th floor and had a VERY impressive view:

It was the perfect place for the bridal party to get ready and take pictures, so all in all it worked out splendidly. The wedding and reception went off without a hitch- April was a beautiful bride of COURSE.

P.S. We're going on the cruise!