When Glo was firmly in the middle of hiking the Camino, she got an email from BYU saying that her request to student teach in Arizona had been denied. It was at that point that she figured there wasn't any sense in waiting to get married, and she and Gordon picked the end of August. Because they wanted to get married in Detroit, and because the Detroit temple was closed for two weeks of the month, and because the temple only has morning appointments on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays (I mean, who wants to get married at NIGHT?), the availability of dates was limited. Somehow, we all landed on Thursday morning, August 24, 2023.
Three months. Three months to plan a wedding.
I could hardly wait ;-) In fact, my organizational mind kicked into high gear, and I was off, taking care of as many details as I could immediately while Glo had limited access and time to do any wedding planning from rural Spain.
Hannah found us a Google template for wedding planning which became a lifeline for coordination and staying on top of things. Many of the pages we didn't need to use, but the to-do list and the guest list were invaluable.
It's crazy to look at this small snapshot of the complete list and remember when everything was marked as "Not started". For the first week, I spent a good eight hours a day, working on things. The most pressing items were finding a venue, a photographer, flowers, and a cake. We made plans to fly to Provo for the bridal shower AND for finding a dress.
I don't know where in my history of living I heard of Zingerman's Cornman Farms in Dexter, but I knew that a wedding venue existed somewhere in Dexter, and it took me only minutes to find it. I explored other places closer to the temple as well, but knowing my nature-loving girl, I knew Cornman would be perfect.
What wasn't perfect was the price.
However, I couldn't worry about that until I had scheduled a tour and considered other venues as well. While it may be a commonplace idea in Utah, wedding venues in Michigan are not all-inclusive. But Cornman was. For a flat price, we could have the venue, a plated dinner, the photographer, the bridal florals, and the cake. Looking around, most places were asking for a minimum of six months for the cake, so the fact that Cornman said they could have one with as little as two weeks notice was a bonus. And trying to find a photographer with only three months notice?
I guess this is where Thursday also played into our plans. Not surprisingly, there isn't a run on reception requests on Thursday afternoons ;-)
So I made an appointment and headed to Cornman to check it out, and this is where the entire series of miracles for this wedding started.
Cornman Farms was perfect. A farmhouse for getting ready, and the most beautiful barn you've ever seen, converted into a venue. They promised us a custom meal, a florist based on Glo and Gordon's survey preferences, a speaker for the music, a beautiful wedding cake, and five hours with a photographer, also chosen by survey answers. For the set price, we were allowed 40 people which was exactly how many Glo and Gordon wanted.
I came home and shared everything with John. I cringe when we end up spending a lot of money because I can see the weekends that he works to pay for it all in cash. He gave it about a day (while also considering another standard room-off-of-a-restaurant venue), and gave me the go ahead. He had spoken to a doctor friend at the hospital who had just spent $70,000 on his daughter's wedding, so our much MUCH cheaper wedding felt like a deal. And as we all know, John loves a deal ;-)
And to his credit, when Hannah found out that we could pay for an hour with farm animals, she didn't even need to say a thing before John said, "We have to get the farm animals for Hannie." And when I told him that I wanted the lemonade bar, he was all for it.
His only specific request? He wanted a doughnut bar. Yep, Dom doughnuts for the win, so I ordered a peg board and dowels from Ukraine for the doughnuts.
Once we had signed the contract, Cornman was on us like white on rice. We had a possible schedule within a day which came in super handy with the next step:
The next thing to worry about were the invitations. Thankfully, Abby Kennedy had just gotten married, and her wedding invitations were to DIE for, so I swallowed my pride and reached out to ask where they had gotten them. Utah Announcements was a revelation in wedding announcements, and I don't know why more people don't use them. They offer custom wedding announcements on high quality paper at reasonable prices. I put Glo in contact with them, and she and her designed ended up with what several friends have told me are "the most beautiful invitations" they've ever seen. I would agree.
Glo had picked her wedding colors of blush and green after searching the internet and found a great grid of all the colors that could work for wedding day:
She then took these colors and started working with the designer on her announcements.
Here are the front and back of the main invitation that went out to everyone:
She was in the details of everything. The placement of the flowers, the color of each flower, the font types, the font sizes. Everything. She would send me drafts and I would think they look great, but then she would have the designed tweak something only to see how much better it looked afterwards. Her artist eye and spirit really came through.
She then designed an invitation to the sealing and the very private reception afterwards. Again, front and back. And when the designer came back to her with the flowers from the main invitation turned on the side of this card, she be like "no, no, I see what you're doing there. let's try harder" and she got the bunch in the middle.
Included was a schedule for the afternoon. I wanted people to know that this reception wasn't just your standard at-the-church, drop-in-anytime reception, but a
real reception. I have to add that the barn was my
one contribution ;-)
Thinking about it, my g-mother would have been so proud. She loved throwing beautiful parties, and this one took the (wedding) cake!
Finally, we included the RSVP card which ended up being such a happy piece of mail to find in my mailbox most days (I have gone through a bit of withdrawal now, finding only bills and junk mail). Again, Glo designed both the front and the back.
Shannon asked for 200 of the invitations, and I got 100. It felt very
very real once the invitations/announcements arrived!
Too, because we needed the registry on the announcements, I created one for them. Glo gave me a basic list of what they would need, and I went shopping. That first week, I sure was doing a lot of tweaking to the site, but in the end I think it worked really well. For posterity, the site was theknot.com/gloandgordon.
Meanwhile, Glo was telling me what the bridesmaids should be wearing. Hannah knew what dress she wanted immediately, and I got going on the suits for the men. Thankfully, John loves to shop so we headed out to find a suit that everyone would like and could order easily. John found a really nice suit at Macy's, and we found a similar (but lighter) tan suit for the groomsmen. And it was on SALE! I contacted Shannon immediately and had her dispense the information to Sam and Ben (her two sons) and Austin (Gordon's childhood friend). In a cute twist of events, Glo wanted the brothers to be part of her bridal party (along with the bridesmaids), so the brothers ordered suits too. It's crazy, three months on, that it all came together so beautifully AND so easily (again, so many miracles).
Ethan was a champ, going to all kinds of stores and trying on suits from the internet.
Gordon's suit was a treasure hunt in the beginning. Glo
really wanted him in a colored suit (and not tan like the other men). From her color palette, she thought green or burgundy would work. I admit it--I had my doubts. I mean, it was difficult to find ANY suit in those colors online (and impossible in any store). Luckily, I found SuitShop.com which just so happened to have both of those colors. Glo was adamant though--the green couldn't have any blue in it. I ordered both suits for Gordon after he went to a local store and got measured.
Hannah made a list for us of bridal shops in the greater Salt Lake valley:
Once Glo got home from Spain, she was all in on planning. In fact, sometimes I would do something, and I could tell that she was disappointed that I hadn't given her the assignment, so I really had to step back and leave all of the other details up to her. She went to visit Gordon just days after getting home, and the suits were there. It wasn't hard for her to pick burgundy. Again, I had my doubts (but I now know, more than I ever have, that I can completely trust Glo).
Dress shopping. Rebecca and Tater flew out, as did Hannah and I, and Shannon (Gordon's mom) tagged along too. The first shop was Mary's Bridal, and honestly the rest of the day held nothing that could compare to their offerings. Glo had chosen two dresses there and wanted to think about them (really, it was so that we could keep looking),
 |
| I only saved the picture of one of them.... |
but at the end of the day, she was sure she wanted one of them.
Or was she?
She had decided that she wanted an a-line dress, but I had taken photos of her in other dresses as well. That night, when she saw herself in the photo of this dress, she thought that maybe she should reconsider:
I mean, LOOK at her figure! No joke, other girls try to wear dresses like this (see the girl in the mirror?), but Glo could rock any and all sample sizes at the stores! No joke, I think the women who work in the stores breathe a sigh of relief when they see someone with Glo's smokin' hot figure walking in to try on dresses.
She wanted to go back to Mary's Bridal after the bridal shower. Mind you, this was the final day we were all going to be in Utah, and the store was closing in mere hours.
The workers at Mary's Bridal brought every "fit and flare" dress they had, and it was when they put the final one on her that she knew she had found THE one. And I couldn't deny it. It was classically beautiful and yet had one edgy/hip element: the sleeves. Glo had been ALL about the sleeves at every store, and we had seen none that looked like these. We were sent with a bunch of fabric in case she decided against them and wanted to make them flutter sleeves, but when she went in to have a bustle put in, the first thing the seamstress said was, "What gorgeous sleeves!" Plus that train? She wasn't really looking for a train, but holy smokes, who wouldn't want THAT one?
And in yet another miraculous moment, when I told Shannon that John wished he could be there, she couldn't believe it. And then I told her that the first question out of his mouth would be, "Do you have a military discount?" Well, our saleswoman overheard me, and she quickly responded, "Yes, we do! 10%" So with Glo's dress choice, not only did she choose the least expensive dress in the entire shop, but we got 10% off of that, making it a winner all around! ;-)
And having now gone through the entire wedding and having seen this dress in photos, it was seriously THE perfect dress for her. Like I said, I learned a lot about Glo's eye for beauty and art throughout this process.
At the last minute, we remembered that she might need a veil. However, we had talked about her having a flower crown instead. The sales woman opened the cabinet and pulled out the most perfect flower head piece. Two seconds later, it was bought as well. Little did we know how well it would work with her dress and in photos!
And while Glo found her dress easily, it wasn't so easy for the rest of us. Lots of dresses were ordered and returned, but we all stuck in the color family and (fingers crossed!) the photos will be beautiful!
Glo also began the process of filling out surveys for the florist and photographer and chef for the reception. It was cute hearing what Glo and Gordon wanted. She was so good thinking of him, and he was so good thinking of her. We were put in touch with Laura at Little House Floral in Ypsilanti (of all places). I couldn't have found a more perfect florist if I'd tried--all we did was give her our colors and needs, and she didn't need any more.
At one point, Cornman was having a tasting event for their many of their menu offerings, so I signed up to get two meals, one of which Glo had already chosen. It was seriously some of the best food I've ever eaten, and I had great hopes. I was concerned though (before I had seen the portions) that there wouldn't be a big enough portion for John to feel like he was getting what he had paid for (at $125/plate). They reassured me that their portions were large, and sure enough most people couldn't finish all the food on their plate the night of the reception. I love that when Glo and Gordon were asked to use two adjectives to describe their thoughts about food, they chose "classic" and "comfort".
In the beginning, I also reached out to Brother Pabst. He has been the sealer for our annual Kennedy sealing session, and he knows all of us. Like only a few others, he is an honorary Kennedy family member <3
Once I had Glo's permission, I asked him if he would seal Glo and Gordon.
 |
Just ONE of the seating
charts we created
along the way. Things kept
changing with the addition
of more guests, and we
eventually had to add an
additional table. |
I also reached out to the Kendalls. After all, it's not a Kennedy wedding if there isn't the sawing of the log. They told me that they would build a new saw buck, borrow a saw, and find a dead tree.
We had to buy ties and socks, and bridesmaid gifts, and order thank you notes and stamps, but in the end, we got it all done. In fact, I wearied a bit of people asking me if I was stressed out as the wedding date neared, because I wasn't at all. We took care of everything, and we were good to go!
A little hiccup though as we went along. Remember that 40 person maximum guest count? The RSVP cards started at a trickle but eventually became a flood of attendees. Really, I had relied on the Spirit to help me choose whom to invite, never guessing that on a Thursday afternoon, people would want to or be able to come. In the end, I invited 75 people and 68 came. And John is the hero of this story, because he never blinked an eye. It raised our flat rate by $3,000, and he still had to pay $125/plate for every person. But all along, he told me that he was doing it for Glo and for me. For her so that she would have a day to remember, and for me so that I too could focus on the things that are important instead of worrying about the details. He's a good man, that John, and like everything in our lives, none of the above would have been possible without him.
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