I was very, very tired and crashed on the couch when I got back. Thomas sweetly took care of me, but not with out significant chiding for having had the party so close to the wedding. But that was the only time Irina could do it, and she was the hostess. Oh well!

Friday was our only day to see out-of-town relatives and friends before the wedding. I'd started off with tea, and later that day we had dinner at Thomas' mom's house with his aunt and uncle, in from Colorado. In between, Thomas got a massage from Kelly (she and Scott having just arrived from Providence, RI). After dinner, we'd planned a casual party at our place for out-of-town friends. Only two -- Daednu and her husband Alex -- showed up, but it was awfully nice to hang out with them for awhile!

Let me just admit that in the last few days before the wedding, my stomach was doing somersaults from stress. I was getting really frickin' sick of everything wedding-related. I didn't want to do all the damn crap we had left -- rehearsal, trial hairstyle, the dinner, packing for the honeymoon -- and I just wanted to get on that plane and high-tail it off to Jamaica. I craved relaxation and laziness. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to *not* be the ultra-organized, on-top-of-everything, hella anal-retentive Trystan I usually am. Those qualities were what got a lot of the wedding stuff done in advance, but these little niggling last-minute details were driving me out of my tiny little mind.

The stress was coming out in a new, but unsettling place: my stomach. Typically, I get stress-related migraines and totally dehabilitating ones at that. But perhaps Thursday's overindulgence lowered my stomach's resistance. Stomach annoyances didn't entirely disappear till we got settled into our room at Sandals Negril, which to me says it was all stress (and the morning we had to leave Jamaica, my stomach started getting edgy again ... ).

back to Part 2  ... ... on to Part 4