The days that lead to the wedding...

 were hectic. Pure, chaotic, craziness. I believe this will happen no matter how organized you are (I am not so much, what I am is a strong believer of the order among the disorder theory). No matter how prepared you think you will arrive to the days before the wedding, there will be things to do. A million. I remember that I was off work since Monday (for our Saturday wedding) and my family was arriving from Mexico on Wednesday afternoon. I normally know what I have to do. I was strongly against agendas all my life. During school, I remembered all of our homework, did not write it down in one of those girly books (that I didn't have) ever since I wasn't forced too. Later, I discovered the use of agendas as a journal, and then I filled them up like crazy but that was more a scrapbook, candy wrappers, phrases from books, my writing collection than a list of appointments and a schedule. Even then, I made lists. There was so much going on my mind, so many little things that I didn't want to forget (and we had a "simple" wedding without the fuss). I put myself to work and my lists were all done and ready by Wednesday before the airport. Little did I know that the hectiness was just about to start. As soon as my family was here, we had to set up to work in preparing the favors. I know Meg and Miss Manners are strongly against them, but for us it meant sharing something of our cultures with our guests, and I believe in saying thank you. And I like small, personal little presents that mean something. Maybe it is a cultural thing, a latin american urge. We used miniature tequila bottles and Stroopwafels, typical dutch wafer-like caramel cookies to represent our up-bringings. And who doesn't love a cookie and a pretty tiny glass bottle.

 Oh yes, but to snuggle in the Tequila. It was not really snuggling because all in all we had 60 little bottles of 50 ml. each. That is 3 Liters and according to the dutch law you can introduce 1 L. of liquor per person and there were 6 of them. My mom had to scatter it among all the luggage and for this kind of thing my dad is paranoid. He thinks to much. He was like... but we are going through Schiphol (Amsterdam's ) airport. Tiny little bottles of liquid are suspicious. They will stop us. Will think it is liquid ecstasy. Will hold us for ours. No. You are not putting any of that in MY luggage. Of course my mom did. Then came the arrival. My God. Instead of coming out all together, they came out one by one, in complete disorganization. First came my dad, fast and easy because he needed a smoke, urgently. Leaving everyone else behind customs even when he is the one who speaks the most languages. Then came my little sis, all alone. Never understood why. Leaving behind my mom, with EVERYONE's luggage on the other side. My mom who can't really speak english. The good thing was we could see her through the glass. Until we didn't. That's when Mark received a phone call from the custom officers at the border. No it was not about the Tequila. They had my brother and his girlfriend on hold. They wanted to know if it was true that they were coming to the wedding of his sister, because they failed to produce an invitation. (Said invitation was conveniently in the luggage, that was already way after and out in the baggage belt with my mom). They also had no phone numbers, no address of us, nothing. It is lucky that my smart mom went to check on them after it had been a while. They were just a few people behind on the line when they had gone through. And she had our phone numbers. So Mark was told to go to a certain place and get them. I stayed waiting with my little sister and my dad was also long gone (outside, for his smoke). Finally, after about 1 hour of first seeing my mom and sister through the glass, everyone was out. That afternoon us girls worked together on said favors and on our welcome packs.

 Oh the welcome packs. I had thought about them early during our planning and then completely forgot about them until that week, when I remembered them by reading this post by Mademoiselle Dentelle.  Great, sane, wedding blog, in french, if you can read it. Full of wisdom in a very fun way. She also gave us the inspiration for our treasure-hunt photographic game that we set up for the kids. I would upload the file we used, but since the instructions of ours were in dutch, I think hers, in french, is still more accesible. So that was Wednesday.

 On Thursday I had to go pick up the dress and get the final instructions for my mom and sis who were going to help me dress up. We also had to figure out how to make a bundle to hold the train of my dress when I was moving around. We were going to put it up as soon as we danced the first dance. Turns out our well prepared schedule was not followed to the letter and we did not dance until about the end of our reception, so I held my dress for most of the time and the baby safety pin (my own) that was supposed to hold the train was never put in place.

 It was my mom's birthday, so we went to eat cake with her and then to Madurodam, an exterior museum where you can see all of Holland in miniature. My mom is a fan of miniatures so it was perfect for her.

 Then, on Friday, the only things left on the schedule were picking up the macarons, having a pedicure and my nails done (I am not that kind of girly girl, but my shoes were open and this was much needed), picking up my aunt and cousin in the center of The Hague, and much later, at around 21h, setting up the place. It was raining so much that doing all of this was quite an adventure. I don't know why I thought I could pick up my aunt and cousin at a cafe in the city and then just take the 25 min. train ride back home with luggage after crossing the city to the station. As soon as we were there in the moment, I realized Mark had to come with the car to pick them up. And we were still waiting for my brother and his girl who had gone to take a walk around the city on their own. So we came back home, left my aunt at the hotel, had a spagghetti for everyone dinner (only us young people) and went to make the place ready. In the meantime I was getting phone calls from everyone who was arriving. A friend was coming from Mexico, we wanted to coordinate the airport pickups in the best possible way (my parents went there), then we had my friends from Barcelona, who had the plan of going out on Friday. Kind of for the bachelorette that I didn't have. I was supposed to meet them after the last preparations. But when we finished setting everything up, it was midnight. So my sister and I just went back to the hotel where my parents were staying, and I just showered and slept. Then came the day.