Everything was ready that could be made ready
Oh look ... it's the hotly anticipated wedding post. The newlyweds have already celebrated their first anniversary, so let's not waste any more time.
November 8, 2024, was an overcast, warm, muggy day. I was up early and went out to my hairdresser's salon before arriving at the church at around ten.
I think the wedding time was six o'clock. It was a Friday evening.
In a perfect world, this would not have been an overly busy day for the mother of the bride. But as we do not inhabit a perfect world, it was an extremely busy day for me.
Cousins Allissa, Dagny, Ember, and Rhett
In fact it was basically nonstop -- and yes, as I mentioned in this post about the wedding from a year ago, I did have a lot of help.
Well wait. It was nonstop until around three, which was the time that picture-taking began. Actually it had been going on since late morning, but for subjects which did not include the wedding party.
Typing that last part made me go and search for a half hour for a tranche of photos that include Audrey's shoes, her perfume, Mike's cologne, their rings, a program, and other assorted memorabilia of the day.
But I know where to find them and I'll post them later in the week.
First Look
Believe me when I say, it was all gorgeous and you would have liked it.
It was just that there was so much to do. And a great deal of it was of the last-minute variety, so it felt nonstop right up until the time when it felt more or less done, and I was forced to stop.
What I have not told you -- at least I don't think I told you in the post from a year ago but if I did, sorry -- is that on the night before, when I got dressed for the rehearsal dinner and put on my shoes, right away I had a problem.
The shoes were not high-heeled and yes I had tried them on and did not notice any issues regarding comfort.
Me and my girl
But on the night before the wedding, probably because my feet had been overworked for two straight days, within a few dozen steps, the shoes shredded the tops of a couple of my toes. Both feet.
Right away upon getting dressed, I knew that I was in trouble. I found some Band Aids and did my best to cover the raw toes, but the only real remedy at that point would have been to stop walking.
Which was not an option for at least another twenty-seven-or-so hours.
The rehearsal dinner venue was across a big parking lot from the church, and I had to traverse that a few times for this reason and that, and trust me it did not help the situation.
Audrey and Dagny and the dress
The thing you have to try to envision is that not only is the church property large, but once you're in the main building, there is a long long long hallway between the sanctuary and the space where the reception was held.
And I walked it countless times, mostly in comfortable slides, but in the end I was walking it more times than I would have wished, in fancy dress shoes.
Which is why, on the wedding day, when it was time to refresh my hair and makeup and put on my dress and shoes and be ready for pictures (because Mike and Audrey wanted to take almost all of the photos beforehand), I had no choice but to wear the shoes.
No, not the same shoes as I wore to the rehearsal dinner. This was the pair that went with my MotB dress, and the heel was higher and although they were mules and the back was open, they were closed at the toe.
Let's take a wee break
And there were big stiff bows that lay across each foot at an angle, and on one of my feet the end of the bow almost immediately began rubbing a hole in the top of that foot.
You can see a Band Aid in some of these pictures. It did not help. Much.
The thing you have to know about my feet is that they are the opposite of wide. They are skinny and have no meat on them. Certainly not on the top. Skin is thin there; it's easy to disturb it and once you do, it will hurt if something keeps rubbing it.
Erica was helping me get dressed and she carefully bandaged my sore toes and did all that she could do in that regard, but from the moment I put my shoes on, it was agony.
Andrew and Audrey
And by that I mean, every single step was so painful that I knew it was going to be a long night. I almost instantly began calculating how long I would have to wear those shoes, and I nearly despaired because I was looking at a minimum of seven hours.
I know what you're thinking -- girl! Put on bedroom slippers the moment the ceremony is over! No one will hold it against you! Everyone will understand!
But I couldn't. My dress did not support that, and besides, you don't walk and stand the same in bedroom slippers as you do in proper heels. Even non-towering ones.
I was locked in until the last dog died and it is not an exaggeration to say that I was desperate.
The bride and her baby
(I will interject here that if I am invited to your daughter's wedding, I will ask your shoe size and the color of your dress and I will bring along the sparkliest, most elegant flats for you to wear when your feet give out. That is a promise.)
So, in the afternoon there was some dead time while the main part of the wedding party went outside to a field across from the church to take some shots, and I waited inside because I could not do the walking and my hair could not do the humidity.
In due time people began arriving. The lobby of the church is fairly large and it began filling with happy babbling wedding guests.
Some dear dear dear friends of TG's and mine came towards me, and then another friend and another, and you know what that's like. It means SO MUCH that they are there, it's almost overwhelming in the moment.
Honeymooning in Paris, beside the Seine
(Do not EVER make the mistake of underestimating the power of your personal presence. If it's welcome, that is, haha. When you are there to support someone, it means more to them than you could ever know unless you have been in the same position in similar circumstances.)
Our friends Bob and Mari were there from Michigan. Our friend Jan flew in from New Jersey. Although we have always stayed in touch, I think it had been at least thirty-five years since we'd seen her in person.
My dear local friend Marsha was there. And then there were the family members who came from Texas and Michigan and Ohio and California.
My little brother Shawn, from Galveston, did not tell me he was coming. He just showed up with his lovely daughter Hannah, and TG came over to me and said did you know Shawn was coming and I said NO and looked over and there he was!
Rascal.
Me and Henry -- and Shawn and Hannah
(And no, I do not have a picture of us together that night. In the picture of me with Henry, you can see Shawn's face just behind Henry's back and Hannah, wearing green and with legs for days, over to my right.)
Amidst all the hubbub of going from one person to the next and greeting and hugging and crying and exclaiming and generally being overjoyed, the lobby all the while becoming more and more crowded and loud, and the wedding hour approaching, the problems began.
I mean, if my sore feet had been the worst that happened, we would all be laughing about this now.
But when I tell you what I have to tell you, although I think I can predict what you will say -- J the P! Relax! Something always goes wrong at weddings! In the end it doesn't matter! No one noticed but you! It's not what people remember! -- I can say back to you, yes but people DID notice and it DID matter and it IS what some people will remember.
Dagny with the Mademoiselles
(I am stubborn that way. And I am also right.)
Especially Audrey and me -- who were crying about it again just the other day as we drove home from Knoxville where we had been helping out with Ember and Guy because Andrew and Brittany were up against it with their schooling and jobs -- who relive it from time to time, and yes it still hurts just as badly as on that wedding day.
(And I will admit that it was not so much any ONE thing as it was everything in the aggregate, with one aspect of what went wrong being so heartbreaking that I will probably not live long enough to get over it.)
The first big thing that happened was that one of our ushers, a young man hand-picked by Audrey and who had promised to work along with one of his friends, also hand-picked by Audrey, to get the nearly two hundred guests seated, sought me out at about five thirty and said he had to go to a basketball game and could not help us.
Audrey and Allissa
Now, looking back I don't understand why I did not say to him, but you're here now and now is the time that the guests need seating. Do you have to leave immediately? What time is your game? Because maybe he could have spared me thirty minutes. We will never know. At any rate, he left.
But he had already pressganged another friend into standing in for him, and that young man was willing to help and assured me that he would see the job through.
I was interrupted in dealing with that problem by one of the two men who would be manning the sound booth for us. He was holding a wedding program and a lapel mic.
He pointed to the name Felix Mendelssohn towards the bottom of the order of ceremony. Will this person be needing a mic? he wanted to know. And no, I am not kidding. I thought HE was kidding but he was not kidding either.
The groom and the girls
I assured him that Mr. Mendelssohn, who shuffled off this mortal coil in 1847, would not be needing a microphone.
By now the guests were being seated and I was hovering anxiously -- as one does -- at the doors to the sanctuary, scanning the scene, when I noticed that the ENTIRE SECOND ROW on the side where TG and I (and our daughter-in-law Brittany) were supposed to be seated in a few minutes, was FULL of my relatives.
I mean they were sandwiched in there like sardines from pillar to post and there was not a single available inch of pew for TG and I to sit on and watch our daughter get married.
NO I did not put signs on the pews. I didn't think I had to; the young men who were supposed to serve as ushers had done it before and knew to keep that pew empty for the parents of the bride, just as the one across the aisle is kept empty for the parents of the groom.
Ember was the flower girl
The young man who had agreed to substitute for the one who had a last-minute athletic event that I assume he'd had no knowledge of when he'd agreed to be an usher (but I'll let it go now), saw my despair and although I do not know how he did it, he managed to clear that pew.
It helped that those on the pew included my sister and her grown children, and they feared they should not be seated in that pew but the less experienced usher had led them there and they'd sat down anyway, and they figured out that they had to move.
At any rate, it got done and that was the first crisis averted.
You'll see in the photos I've included that Henry had arrived -- for those who do not know, Henry was married to my late mother for the last thirty-seven years of her life -- and when I greeted him, I reminded him that he was walking me down the aisle.
Only one would make it down the aisle
So imagine the depth and breadth of my chagrin when I looked down towards the front after the stuffed-pew disaster and saw that Henry was seated in a different pew with some other of our relatives from Greenville (the South Carolina upstate).
WHAT is Henry doing down there, sitting? I exclaimed to someone. I don't even remember who it was. They probably thought I was crazy. But Henry was retrieved from the audience and brought back out to the lobby, confused and in a daze.
He did not even understand what had taken place, and no, Henry does not suffer from dementia or anything like that. He is simply old. God bless him; he was doing his best but REALLY Henry? Hahaha give me a heart attack. It would be easier.
But he sweetly waited there as I asked him, to walk me down. What would be next?
At the symphony in London
Turns out that what was next was, the music began playing that would accompany the pastors and the groom and his gentlemen as they came out to stand and await the rest of the wedding party and, ultimately, the bride.
It was the Brooklyn Duo playing a breathtaking cover of Can't Help Falling in Love.
I had, the night before, gone over with the gentlemen not once, not twice, but several times, exactly what their musical cue would be. And yet, said cue came and went, and the men did not appear.
Well. Finally they DID appear, and no real harm was done, and it was then time for Mike's mother, Judi, to proceed down the aisle to her seat, on the arm of her grandson, Mike's son Peter.
We had not seen Jan in decades
I have included at the top of this post a picture of the empty church with the front and the pews all decorated, and the runner in place for the entrance of the bridesmaids and bride.
You will notice upon viewing that photo that I had tied two lengths of tulle ribbon, looped around the pew on each side of the aisle, into a bow at the end closest to the lobby.
Signifying, no one walk on this runner until the mothers of the bride and groom are being taken to their seats.
Obviously my intention was for someone -- oh, I don't know; the wedding coordinator, perhaps? -- to UNTIE that bow after the guests were seated and just before the wedding was to begin.
My four babies
OK so now, picture in your mind's eye Mike's mother, Judi, a charming but neither small nor sprightly lady well into her eighties, proceeding to that point on the arm of her grandson Peter.
And the bow has NOT been untied, and as they go forward the slight give of the tulle against his leg attracts Peter's attention, and he looks down and quickly sees what's going on and nimbly tugs at one of the tails of the tulle bow and it sort of comes undone but they are still walking the whole time.
And Judi is wearing a street-length dress, and the remnants of the tulle bow wafting down becomes entangled on the lower part of her right leg, and she just keeps going, and eventually she is dragging a long piece of tulle from her ankle all the way to her seat.
The two pastors who stood and watched this mini-drama unfold managed to keep straight faces, but I will never know how.
TG and me with Andrew, Stephanie, Audrey, Erica
And I was watching, horrified, on the arm of the feeble Henry, waiting my turn to be seated. Eventually the tulle-festooned Judi was safe in her seat and Peter went up to stand beside his dad.
And it was my turn.
It was a long way down that aisle. My feet felt like blocks of stone, except those stone blocks contained ten trillion nerve endings and they were all crying out in pain.
Something was not right about the music; it sounded muffled, and there would be too much of the song left after I reached my seat and settled into it.
Arriving to a rainy Paris
But, in for a penny in for a pound. We kept going and reached that now-vacant (except for Brittany) second pew, and I sat, and hoped that the problems were over.
But they were not.
Because the next thing I heard was three-year-old Rhett, all dressed in a tiny tux with a smart red bow tie, WAILING from the lobby. It was a genuine meltdown. He would not be walking down beside Ember and sitting on the black iron bench beneath the lamppost, in front of the groomsmen.
Everyone heard Rhett and I guess there was a sympathetic titter or two, but the wedding was underway so we had no choice but to roll with it.
Mrs. Erni enjoying fresh-made Parisian Madeleines
(At this point I should tell you that until I had grandchildren, I was staunchly against children being in weddings. Ah well. We live and learn. At least that's what we say.)
I should also tell you that it would be impossible to estimate how many hours I sat in the months leading up to the wedding, planning how each song would represent each stage of the beautiful ceremony.
It would be so magical and everyone would be entranced, and they would never forget how perfectly every step that the girls took had been matched to the lush, romantic tunes Audrey and I had chosen.
Except, as the strains of the Brooklyn Duo playing La Vie en Rose began -- the bridesmaids' processional -- and I was anticipating, shortly, seeing Dagny float past me on her way to the platform, the music suddenly stopped.
Dagny had her own meltdown as Rhett slept
It just stopped and there was silence. No bridesmaids had begun down the aisle yet; there had not been time.
Then the music for Audrey's processional began.
Here I should assure you that there was nothing difficult about what I had asked the sound person to do.
All that was required was to press PLAY and let THREE SONGS play in sequence, until the end of the bridal processional. Nine minutes. Three songs all in a row on my Spotify playlist. Easy peasy.
But no. The bridesmaids' music started and WAS STOPPED before any bridesmaids could go. Then the bride's music started, but it wasn't time for her to go.
Then, just as inexplicably, the bride's processional music stopped and the bridesmaids' music began again.
My sister comforted her
This time it was allowed to play to the end, and the girls all got into place, and then Audrey's song started and she came down the aisle on the arm of her father, but by that time I was shell shocked.
I barely remember the actual wedding but that's pretty normal; for the main players it is all usually a blur.
But when it was over and the wedding party had marched out to Mendelssohn's Weddng March -- that's Felix Mendelssohn without a mic -- I was frozen, immobile, unwilling to get back onto my feet.
As in, TG and I were supposed to spring up and follow the last members of the party, and then Peter would have gone back down and retrieved his grandmother, Mike's mother, to join us all in the lobby preparing to go down the long long long hall to the reception.
But the last couple walked by and I didn't move. It wasn't until the pastor was telling everyone what came next, and giving instructions and preparing to pray for the meal, that I nudged TG and we got up and walked out.
The Mademoiselles waited to distribute treats
SO. STRANGE. I cannot explain it so don't ask. I was not in my right mind. I don't know what became of Judi, but she did show up in the line of wedding party members to be introduced at the reception, and there was no tulle wafting from her ankle at that time.
Meanwhile Rhett had fallen asleep -- unconscious, more like -- in the arms of a stalwart friend in the lobby, who cradled the little guy and let him rest. Turned out Rhett had not had a nap that day and according to his mother, the meltdown was more or less inevitable.
I can accept that.
And by that time the worst was over and although I could barely walk without looking as though I needed assistance, no one offered to assist me -- hahahaa -- so I just kept going. Not sure how but I do know that I managed to stay on those feet and I may have faltered but I did not fall.
Of course we were overjoyed for Mike and Audrey. They were married and so happy. What a miracle that entire romance and wedding was, and what a blessing.
All of us except for Melanie and Elliot
We had a lovely Paris-themed reception and I heard comments that everyone was impressed by the attention to detail. And since I am nothing if not detail-oriented, I took those comments as great compliments.
One detail was that we enlisted the help of two mademoiselles to dress in black dresses with white collars and wear red berets, and go around the room carrying basketsful of Donsuemor Madeleines, traditional shell-shaped French cakes, to all of the guests.
Already at each place there were small glassine bags containing a croissant and a tiny jar of French-made jam, and miniature spoon to spread your jam onto your croissant, if you could not wait for your turn to the buffet.
The food was delicious. The church's chef had prepared everything so carefully, and there were tiny Eiffel Tower clips holding up hand-calligraphed signs in front of each chafing dish, with the names of the foods in French.
My brother-in-law, Pierre-Philippe, French by birth and who speaks only halting English despite having been married to my sister, an American, for forty-eight years, gave a welcome address to the guests, which he read first in French, and then in English with his charming accent.
Rhett revived for the reception
Then everyone fell to feasting and fellowshipping, and there was so much talking and laughing, and we don't even drink or dance so if you can imagine a high level of excitement and fun without that, people just enjoying being together and being buoyed by the romance and beauty of the occasion, then you will have an idea of what it was like to be there.
Then it was time for TG to make a little speech, and some tears were shed, and then Mike and Audrey cut their cake and the confection was consumed (I got not one single bite of cake; by the time I got there, only crumbs remained), and eventually the newlyweds left, and we all waved pretty ribbon-and-lace streamers as they ran to the car.
I wish I could find those pictures too but I know where to get them and I'll share them later this week.
There is more I could add about some of the glitches but restraint being the better part of valor, I will not share all that is in my heart and mind.
Suffice it to say that it was a memorable and meaningful occasion. It had substance and significance, and for that I am grateful because the older I get, the more I fear missed opportunities.
The happy couple
I do not think we missed any part of our opportunities surrounding that event, to give it the thought and care and love and weight that it deserved.
Mike and Audrey toured London Paris and even hopped over to Istanbul for a few days, on their two-week honeymoon which upon their return they described as idyllic.
I got sunburnt on my honeymoon, definitely stateside, no flying involved, so I was happy for them that their trip was so special.
They seem to be happily married. They laugh a lot. What more could we ask for?
And that is all for now.
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Happy Monday
