Now that I’ve emerged alive, (mostly) intact and more than just a little emotionally drained on the other side of this whole wedding business, I’m bursting with so much to share. Our wedding was incredible – an honest-to-goodness real-life fairytale (Cue eyerolls now. It’s ok. I know; it’s sickening).
Incredibly enough, for having planned this whole shindig from 900 miles away, it went off with hardly a hitch. Now, it wouldn’t be a wedding if there weren’t something in the way of hitches (Hitches! Ha! How amusing. Get it? Since we were rendezvousing for the purpose of getting hitched…har har har). And hitches there were. There was the flat tire. There was the night we were starving and desperately wanted Moe’s and even though the GPS told us there was a Moe’s right under our nose (I’m a poet. I know it. Don’t be jealous.) we couldn’t find it anywhere. There was the fender bender in the parking lot of Lowe’s in the brand new vehicle. There was the boutonniere I forgot to crochet for my husband (whoops). There was the mixup with some of the girls about where we were getting our nails done and that meant we were all getting our nails done at the same time … in completely different places. There was the clasp that came off of a bridesmaid dress and needed to be emergency sewn at the last minute. There was the bridesmaid bouquet flower that fell off the stem and had to be emergency doctored back to life.
But that stuff, that’s the stuff of good stories now. Moments that gave levity to and simultaneously grounded that time in safekeeping forever. Moments that made me realize how wonderfully wild this whole thing really was.
Then there’s the good stuff. Well, there’s just not really words to properly convey just how good the good stuff was. Our rehearsal was a frenzied, frantic whirlwind of bellowed orders. A flurry of excitement and confusion and seeing faces I hadn’t seen in ages. It was the first time everything became real. And following the practicing of vows, we had the most delectably tasty and conversation-filled evening among friends at our favorite Italian restaurant. Perfectly seasoned sauces and succulent noodles and bread dipped in oils and spices and wine and delectable dessert. A bacchanalian fantasy.
And then there was the day. The day. I spent the night in a hotel room with my sister, and I pretended it was just a sleepover. The next morning I work up with thoughts whirring around in my head and an inability to concentrate on any one of them. We went to the salon where stylists transformed our hair into lovely pieces of artwork atop our heads. We went to the church and pulled on our dressy duds – mine a little crisper, a little whiter, a little poofier than anyone else’s. And I watched the hands on the clock tick by. Until the moment I got to walk down, arm in arm with my father, toward my handsome redhead.
The Frozen Southerner 