Ok I fell victim to "Bride Brain" as so many beautiful ladies before me have called it. I suggest you grab a glass of wine or a cocktail and buckle up for this one. This is one heck of a ride. I woke up in a cold sweat one morning because I realized we were about to get married and we didn't have bridesmaids dresses yet and I didn't have my dress. Oh the humanity! This dream clearly occurred before my dress shopping trip. We'll touch on that just a little later however there is a very different reason for this posting. I should have known after this nightmare what was going to happen.
I truly have experienced my first wedding related problem. The morning after I had my literal nightmare I received a message on FB from my mother that I needed to call my grandmother. Umm that doesn't sound very good. So naturally I started panicking thinking my g-ma was ill or in the hospital. I may have overreacted because when I got to the next line it said, there's some national event going on during the weekend of your wedding and your Aunt T say hotels are booking up.
I died. Ladies/Gents I seriously died. I panicked. I received this message in September.,10 months before my wedding and there are hotels being booked up? Eau Claire is NOT that large. How could this happen?! I picked my wedding date first and as far as I had known NOTHING major was happening on that weekend. Oh silly me.
So what was happening the weekend of my wedding? Oh let me tell you. If you are not from the Midwest you may not know about this little (ok not little like MAJOR) Country festival called Country Jam USA. Allow me to introduce you to my nemesis:
-photos via Country Jam USA
Oh Country Jam USA how I hate you and your good looking Country stars. Ok hate is a very strong word but highly irritated.
Well I started looking online for hotels during my wedding weekend and lo and behold my Aunt T was correct. Some hotels were already sold out for that weekend! I looked at our venue's preferred properties and already 2 out of the 5 were sold out for that weekend. I panicked. Mr. Farmer panicked. MOH B panicked. MIL S panicked. Momma D panicked. We had a panic party!
After our panic attack I took a deep breath and realized that the only solution for this was to reserve my block of rooms early, like way early. At this point we had over 300 people on our guest list, and yes, granted we don't expect EVERYONE to attend, we had a large group of people. So I called the hotel right next door to the venue thinking they would be able to give us the rooms we needed, I mean it was one of the reasons I picked our venue, the hotel right next door.
Oh silly me, I was wrong again. They would only be able to give us 10 rooms on Friday night and 20 rooms on Saturday night. WHAT?! That wasn't even enough for our bridal party and VIPS. We panicked again.
After another panic party we decided we needed another hotel, so I called The Holiday Inn Eau Claire South I-94 and they were fantastic. They were able to give us 12 rooms to start out and once those get filled they will give us more and keep going until they run out of room. She assured me that they had plenty of rooms to give. Plus it was only a 3 mile drive away from the venue and if we had enough occupancy we could arrange a shuttle. Phew! Crisis averted, or so I thought.
Well that still didn't solve the problem with lack of rooms at the first hotel, The Hotel Metropolis. I contacted my parents and Mr. Farmer's parents and we started reserving some rooms. Well the karma Gods must of been smiling down on us because 2 days later I received an email from the hotel saying they could give us an additional 10 rooms each night. 20 rooms for Friday and 30 for Saturday. (I imagine it was because they realized we were serious about reserving that many rooms) Thank goodness!
In order to alert all of our friends and family we have decided to include an explanation in our Save The Dates that they must reserve their rooms way in advance in order to get a room. However this was certainly not something I would have expected to have to tell them in our Save the Dates.
Normally this is something you put in the invitation right!?
Did anyone else have a panic attack at some point in your planning?!
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