It All Worked Out in the End

Have you ever been planning a big event or activity and had one of those stress nightmares the night or two before?

You know the kind of nightmare I am talking about, right?

When you show up  late and the whole thing is a disaster?

Or when nobody else shows up and the whole thing is a disaster?

Or when too many people show up and you don't have enough food and the whole thing is a disaster?

Or when you show up with the completely wrong decorations and when you go home to grab the RIGHT decorations, you somehow end up in your classroom teaching a lesson you forgot about and then realize that you needed copies of an assignment so you leave the kidlets alone in the classroom while you run upstairs to the copy room, but on the way you meet a handsome cowboy who wants to take you out to meet his herd, but you can't go because you still have to make copies and teach the lesson before you can go put the right decorations on the table?

No? You haven't had THAT particular panic dream. Interesting. I thought it was fairly universal.

What about the dream where you arrive at the stake center on a Saturday morning to get things set up for the General Women's Conference Broadcast that evening and find out that the building has been double booked for a wedding/wedding luncheon/reception?

No again? Here, let me tell you about mine.

I remember walking into the gym and seeing tables already set up and partially decorated and thinking, "Am I late? How did they get so much done already?" Then I saw a man appeared and perkily proclaimed, "Welcome to my wedding!" And it was at that point that I started looking around for the handsome cowboy who usually shows up at this point in my dreams. But instead of a tall handsome stranger striding into the room, I saw one of the sisters from the stake Primary presidency sitting with her head in her hands. I thought, "Oh. If this is going to be a cowboy-less panic nightmare, I think I will just go ahead and wake up now." But I didn't wake up. I didn't wake up because, it turns out, it wasn't a dream.

Because the Women's Broadcast wasn't scheduled to begin until 6 p.m., the building scheduler almost reasonably assumed that it would be fine for the wedding festivities to be scheduled in the chapel and cultural hall right up to then. The scheduler meant well. I mean, the wedding was for an older couple who hadn't been active in the Church and it was a really, really good thing that they were getting married. And if it had been a Priesthood broadcast, it wouldn't have been a problem at all.

But this was a WOMEN'S broadcast. As in, the kind of broadcast where WOMEN spend ten hours preparing for a post-broadcast meet-and-greet that will last maybe 40 minutes. That is how we roll!

One by one, the rest of our Relief Society presidency showed up, along with the sisters from the stake Young Women's and Stake Primary, And one by one, we all had that, "This has got to be a bad dream!" moment. 

If you are brave enough, try to imagine what could have happened with not one, not two, but THREE auxiliary presidencies finding out that they won't be able to start making things pretty for 450 sisters until about 20 minutes before those sisters show up. Then, if you aren't already terrified, add to the mix a bride who is trying to put a whole wedding/luncheon/reception together with just the help of her soon-to-be-husband and a friend or two.

To The Brides credit, she took the whole mix-up very calmly. The only time I saw her teeter on the verge of a come-apart was when her groom cheerfully offered to postpone the wedding for another month. I think he was teasing. I also don't think he did any more teasing for the rest of the day.

To our credit, we only teetered on the edge of one collective auxiliary come-apart for a moment as well, and then we launched into Plan B mode. Since The Bride was only planning on using half the gym, and we wouldn't have time to do everything between 5:30 and 6,she let us set up the chairs for the overflow.

The rows and rows of chairs didn't add anything to the party ambiance, so The Bride really gets a ton of extra good sport points for that.

Sister Woodhouse also scored some extra points, dusting EVERY SINGLE ONE of the folding chairs so that none of the sisters in attendance would smudge their dresses. How sweet of her was that?

Then, so we would be ready to roll as soon as the reception ended, the primary ladies took the rest of us into the Relief Society room to give us a lesson in how to set up the centerpieces they had designed for the tables.

It turned out, both our decorations and The Bride's decorations featured burlap, so the Bride was invited in to see them too.

She really liked our centerpieces...

And the adorable cake stands that had been made for the post-conference tables...

So our head decorator thanked The Bride for her good sportswomanship by spening the rest of the morning helping The Bride fancy-up her reception by mixing our decorations with hers. It ended up looking super nice and The Bride seemed pretty pleased.

So then we all went home for a couple of hours to rest up and carbo-load for the superfast setup we were going to have to do that evening. Because the wedding was going to be followed by a luncheon and reception, we couldn't use the kitchen to get our refreshments ready. Instead, we set up in the Young Women's room.

A restaurant in town donated enough cheesecakes to feed 450 sisters.

Yes, you read that right. They made it, cut it, and donated it.

Six different flavors: chocolate, cherry, strawberry, coconut, banana, and caramel.
We love them all so much! And by "them" I mean the family who owns the restaurant and all of their flavors of cheesecake.

With only an hour to get 450 pieces of cheesecake plated, we called in the big guns to help us. My pal Val came and helped tackle the cream cheese challenge, and so did the sister missionaries who are serving in my ward. We never would have made it without them!

As soon as the last reception guest left, everyone who wasn't elbow deep in cheesecake ran out to change table cloths and get the decorations set up.

And miracle of miracles, every table was beautified before sisters started arriving for the meeting.

In fact, everything went so smoothly that except for some heavy breathing as we speed walked into the chapel, there were no signs of the scheduling drama that had been going on all day.

We spent the next 90 minutes feasting on the Gospel, as taught by our beloved general leaders and the handsomest Apostle, Elder Uchtdorf. And after our souls had been fed and our spirits had been lightened, we feasted on cheesecake, which also helped to lighten our spirits... while not doing a thing to lighten our backsides.

And so everything turned out just fine, even with only an hour to get ready.

Afterwords, one of the brethren who had come to help with the post-meeting-clean-up wondered aloud if, now that we knew it was possible to set things up 45 minutes before the meeting started, we would just keep working on that abbreviated time frame from now on. After all, he reasoned, why spend 10 hours doing what could be done right before. 

About 15 seconds later, he stopped wondering about that and focused instead on being grateful that we were all to exhausted to aim carefully when throwing decorative gourds at his head, and too full of cheese cake to chase him all the way down the block

You can watch my favorite musical number from there meeting by clicking below...

And to click below to watch the awesome video about the blessings of the temple that was shown between speakers!