Wedding Mishaps (Eleventy-one things 26-28)

Eleventy-One things about me, #26: My wedding rehearsal was a disaster. But the marriage wasn't.

#27: DH (dear husband) and I were married July 24, 1999.



Mark Daniels has a recent post about how mistakes make weddings memorable. That was certainly true in our case. In the time leading up to our wedding just about everything that could go wrong, did.



I was in a car accident a month or two before the wedding. Another vehicle rear-ended me at about 40-50 mph and my car was sandwiched between the cars behind and ahead of me. My car was totaled and both my passenger (my sister/maid of honor) and I were injured. So our wedding preparation was punctuated by car shopping, struggles with the insurance company, and doctor/physical therapy appointments.

The week or so before the wedding was crazy. The florist made all the boutonniers the wrong color. The baker decided a week or so before the wedding that she no longer wished to make our sheet cakes. The tux shop realized a few days before the wedding that the tuxes we picked out wouldn't work because they didn't have one big enough for our largest groomsman.

At the rehearsal we discovered there weren't enough plug-ins in any one spot in the church for our musicians and microphones. The head usher didn't show up for the rehearsal. The flower girl and ringbearer refused to walk up the aisle together. We couldn't find the aisle runner. Finally we found it--sort of. The janitors had cut it up with scissors to cover an ugly half-built soundbox in the church. I dissolved into tears at that point.



We didn't have enough chairs at the rehearsal dinner for everyone present. And we spilled a huge puddle of wax from a candle on the carpet right in the middle front of my father-in-law's church sanctuary--his pride and joy.

The bridesmaids' dresses weren't finished until the morning of the wedding. The head usher (one of DH's brothers) finally drove into town just minutes before the wedding was supposed to start. (He did, however, end up hitting it off with the pianist, who was a childhood friend of mine. They got married the next July.)

After all that, the wedding day itself seemed like a dream.

The flower girl and ringbearer were fidgety and made a bit of a distraction, but that was actually one of the highlights of the wedding--everyone thought they were hilarious and adorable.

The handle fell off the replacement aisle runner, but I didn't know about it until after the wedding. (The runner was borrowed from one of my bridesmaids who had gotten married a few weeks before--the cake fell over at her wedding, and we didn't tell her about it until after the wedding either.) The attendants managed to unroll it by pinning it to the carpet and then laboriously twisting the roll in their hands all the way down the aisle.

DH and I thought each other looked fabulous, and we were getting married--that was all that mattered. I can still see the look in his eyes the first time he saw me that day, and every time he looked at me after that. He kept saying, "Wow. Wow. You're so beautiful. Wow."



We were fabulously, ecstatically in love. God was a huge part of our relationship and our day, and we knew that gave us a strong foundation. Neither of us had any last-minute doubts. The excitement and joy in the air was palpable, as many guests commented later. We couldn't take our eyes off each other. I think it added significantly to the excitement and amazement of the day for us that we had saved even our first kiss for our wedding day.



We had a few stolen moments to practice that kiss again downstairs before guests flooded in for the reception. Then the long wait until we could escape for the honeymoon. I just remember we kept looking at each other and whispering, "We're married! We're really husband and wife. We really belong to each other--completely and forever." When we were finally alone, we reveled in that fact.

#28: Almost 6 years later, I still think my husband is one of the best things that ever happened to me.