by Isabelle Esteves

Created on: July 08, 2008

It was Thanksgiving Day when the call came in. "Mom, Barbara and I want to get married at home two days after Christmas". My son was in the Navy and stationed a thousand miles away. His future bride was from the mid west and had no family. I had just been elected as the "Wedding Coordinator".

I have to admit that my children think I can do anything. I guess I should have discouraged this view of me years ago but what the heck, I am Superwoman.

The first thing I did was what I always do, make a list.

To Do:

1. Find a Justice of the Peace.

2. Call the town hall and find out the requirements for getting a marriage license.

3. Find a caterer.

4. Order flowers.

5. Arrange for chairs and tables.

6. Find a photographer.

7. Try to stay calm.

8. Get a list of people who the couple wants to invite.

9. Send out invitations.

10. Order the wedding cake.

After some serious consideration, I decided that we would host the wedding in our home. We would remove all the furniture from our living room and fill the room with chairs, chapel style. The actually ceremony would take place in front of the fireplace. When the ceremony was complete tables would be set up in the room and also in our family room.
The dining room would hold the buffet and the bar would be in the kitchen. The bridge would dress upstairs and come down the stairs on my husbands arm.

With only a month and no engaged couple available a religious ceremony was out of the question. One of our friends is a justice of the peace so the first order of business was to make sure that he was available for the day that we wanted to have the wedding. He was and so that was one item down.

I passed on the official information to my son and his future wife about what they would need to get their marriage license.

I didn't have time to order wedding invitations on line so I went to the local stationary store and picked up invitations that could be filled in by hand. Luckily for me my best friend is also my sons godmother so soon she was seated beside me helping fill out the invitations and the envelopes. Of course in the mean time I had to run to the post office for stamps for the outer and inner envelopes.

Once they were mailed out I called a caterer that I am familiar with and asked him to save the date and discussed what the meal would cost. I made a few changes to one of his standard menus and then agreed to call a week before the wedding to give him the final numbers.

Luckily I work at a church and we have a center with lots of tables and chairs

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