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After arriving in the Dells, getting our keys for the Bait Shop and the Brown House, we headed over to unpack.  Obviously, this took much less time than packing the cars and we knew that on Friday, we would have to move everything over to the Champagne Chalet (just next door) for the rehearsal.  Oh well.  The only casualty of the day was a cooler that was dropped and just happened to contain about 10 bottles of Mike’s, Captain Morgan, vodka and the Bombay Sapphire.  The only bottle that  broke was the expensive gin.  Not the $18 vodka, of course.  We survived and a new bottle was purchased.

My plan for the afternoon was to be at the pool.  Which is exactly what I did. 

Jason, Ryan and Kyle opted for some basketball in the pool.  They asked if I wanted to play (insisted, really) and I got in the water, headed over to them and the movie, Meet the Focker’s, flashed into my head.  No, I will not be playing basketball today with guys that are all 50 lbs. heavier and 9″ taller than me.  Thanks, I’d like to keep my nose unbroken.  So, I chatted with my mom, read a book and when happy hour started, Jenny and I had a cold beer.

The Clarks arrived around 4:30 to the pool but I was starting to feel the burn of the 90 degree day, even with my spf 30 that advanced to spf 50 as the day wore on.  I headed back to the house, realized I needed aloe and my dad saved me.  He had remembered to grab it from the house in Portage, “just in case”!  It helped a ton!  That night we went to dinner at Port Vista in the Dells, a cute little local place and the Swing Crew just happened to be playing at their Tiki bar that night!  They toasted us after dinner, which was pretty cool!  Our family from Ohio and Aaron and Sara were able to make it in time for dinner so we had almost the whole deck to ourselves.  Great dinner and great way to start the celebration!

After dinner, we headed back to the Bait Shop for some pool and conversation.  The Athman’s, Yury and Saroja, and Kayla and Steve all showed up, and also Beau, a good friend from South Carolina.  It was a fun night but I headed to bed fairly early because there was lots to be done on Friday!

Friday morning, we were planning on golfing at 8 am.  Everyone was at the course and ready to go, and my mom, Yury and Clarke, even got to play two holes before the weather was completely uncooperative and we all sat in the clubhouse until about 10:30am.  Unfortunately, some of us didn’t get to try the golf thing again that day.  A few of the guys braved it a little later on, but the rain just wouldn’t stop.  Instead, everyone kind of wandered around aimlessly at the resort until the middle of the afternoon.  At this point, I was a little stressed out.  The rain wasn’t stopping, I was disappointed we didn’t get to golf and I really wanted everyone to have fun that day!  I’m sure they were all fine, but my overactive mind just kept going.  Jayne showed up with the flowers from Lewiston Perennial Farms about 2pm that day and we headed to my parent’s to check them out.  So beautiful!!!!  Except for my bouquet.  Too pink, too white and looked so completely different from the rest of the flowers that I loved!  I lost it a little at this point and had a little bit of a cry.  Thankfully, Jayne was able to take the bouquet back to the farm the next morning, I talked to the owner and when I saw it again on Saturday, it was absolutely perfect.  By this point, we had moved everything into the Champagne Chalet and were just waiting for everyone else in the bridal party to arrive to start the rehearsal.  I needed some R&R, so I took a glass of Prairie Fume into the master bathroom at the Chalet, and relaxed by chatting with Sara.  After a hot shower and some more girl talk with Kayla and Julia, I felt much better.  Except that it started raining again and the rehearsal outdoors, wasn’t happening.

I don’t think I have mentioned yet how amazingly helpful everyone was the entire weekend.  It was so wonderful and made everything go off smoothly.  While people were getting the food out and organized ( I don’t even know who was doing this because I was “relaxing”, how great are people) Sara said, let’s just do the rehearsal in the Chalet.  Okay, quick change of plans everyone!  We moved furniture, used the great fireplace as our main focus point and everything got under way.  My father-in-law, Mike Clark, had even brought an awning that we could put up over the grill so that our bbq could begin, even though it was still sprinkling a little.  Dinner was great, everyone ate and drank, laughed, talked, got to know each other better.  Perfect.  We gave out our gifts to the bridal party and I could barely get through “It means so much to have you all here” before I had to stop and just give out the gifts.  Oh, so sappy.

Early night for me, just some chatting with the girls before I headed to sleep.  However, not everyone went to bed early that night.  I don’t have all the details, but most of the guys and a few of the girls married to and dating the groomsmen decided to head over to the reception happening at the tent around midnight, and then sing karoake, and then eat some cake back at the reception (everyone was gone from it) before stumbling back to the Bait Shop.  I think they had a good time.

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