My Wedding Day: Chapter Three

Ah yes, we were to the actual ceremony part of the wedding weren't we!

I got to the front of the aisle turned around to face the guests and the wind immediately whipped the hem of my dress neatly onto the upward curve of the stabilizing foot on the (previously pictured) beautiful brass archway. Luckily we had tucked my veil into the ginormous bow on the back of my dress, so that never became an issue during the ceremony.

My mother, seated on the front row took notice of this right away. In fact I don't think she heard or saw another thing the entire wedding, she was so fixated on the fact that my dress was caught. I seem to remember her making strange gestures toward the wedding party, but figured it was just her way of coping with her middle child and only flesh and blood daughter getting hitched.

So, there I was caught and unaware.

The ceremony could have gone without a hitch, but, it didn't. While mild in comparison to previous and upcoming debacles, a hitch it was. The main problem (other than the wind and no one hearing a single word we said) was the ring portion of the program.

For some odd reason, that I cannot justify even to this day, we gave the job of ring bearer to my husbands youngest sister, an adorable little rough and tumble tomboy age 5. ( The flower girl job went to her equally adorable girly girl sister age 7.)
It all made sense at the time!
You know, adorable cuteness on each side of the wedding party to create visual balance.
They both seemed to have reservations about being in the wedding.
The younger because she would actually have to wear a dress and brush her hair, and the older because the dress was green and not purple. I left the job of dealing with that whole mess to their Mom. ( Still don't know what she bribed them with to make it all happen!)
Both of them ended up fighting their own battles with my children in each of their weddings so I guess we are even.

I have to throw in a photo here.

As you can see, the wind is blowing...a recurring theme. And there, my readers is my little sister in law.
Oh, I have so much I could tell you about her as a child, but am choosing to keep it to myself because she likes me right now and I wanna keep it that way. Especially since she is coming over this afternoon to help me with my children, who by the way are so similar to her in soooo many ways. Sigh, good memories!

She seemed to take her job pretty seriously and worked hard despite her inane nature for destruction and dirt to keep the rings safely on the pillow until they were needed.
Little did I know, she probably could have ridden on the back of a tractor with that little pillow tied to a rope dangling off of the back and they would have still been attached.
Whoever had the job of tying the rings on must have known her all too well and tied them on tight!!
I am fairly certain that the ceremony doubled its time just in ring removal.
Ok, maybe it wasn't that bad, but instead of a gentle tug, it took the maid of honor and the preacher to remove one ring, and in turn the best man and the preacher to remove the other.

Of course the ring did not go smoothly onto my dear husbands finger, but stopped at the first knuckle, drawing a chuckle from any guest who was close enough to see that. I think he encouraged it all the way onto his finger, but I don't recall when that was.

Meanwhile, still on the ranch. My mother is about to go into apoplexy with her attempts to draw someones attention to the fact that my dress was caught. I know she had slow motion visions of me stepping away and carrying the arch along with me, or dumping it over onto my head, or knocking out the preacher, or taking out my maid of honor. Who knows the number of scenarios she had cooked up by that time.

Somehow though, she must have made it clear to the preacher because during our "you may kiss the bride" kiss, he leaned over and tugged my dress free.
I was still clueless!

We made it through, sealed it with a kiss, were pronounced man and wife and headed down the aisle hand in hand to the absolutely perfect music I had chosen for this moment in time.

Well, that was what was supposed to have happened anyway...

...to be continued!