How do people manage with big weddings?

Ours is small and I'm tired of it already. I've comforted myself recently with the knowledge that, once the invitations are sent, we don't actually HAVE to do anything else for the day to go off alright. It's kind of like that point in a course where you realize, even if you don't do one single assignment for the rest of the semester, you'll still pass. Why yes, I did have a terrible case of senioritis my last year of university, why do you ask?

Tonight James and I are meeting with a friend of his to work on invitation design. We've mostly got it down, decided on the wording, figured out whose design we'd like to rip off (this one), and now all we need to do is tweak the layout and argue over fonts. I'm going for Jane Austen and Port Credit, and James is in the "less girly" camp.

James' best man has thrown a monkey wrench into the mix; his work schedule has been changed (he's a firefighter) and he's now scheduled to work at 6 pm on our wedding day. Apparently there is no way for him to get out of this. So, looks like the ceremony has to be at 4. I'm trying to figure out what to do with the in-between-ceremony-and-reception time - we'd been planning on avoiding it because it feels disjointed and leaves people wondering how to kill time for a couple hours.

We've also signed up for a marriage counseling workshop on June 7 at the request of our officiant. Looks like it should be beneficial, and cheaper than individual counseling! Can't go wrong with that.

Anyway, this weekend we are taking a break from planning and instead blowing some money on a trip to Saltspring Island. We're staying in a nice B&B and we're going to have a calm and relaxing weekend. We'll probably do some wine tours, maybe go to some yarn stores after (plenty of sheep on that island, and after the wine tour is the appropriate time if James is to come along). Maybe we'll look at some jewelers and fabric stores as well.