Wedding Dresses

Emily and Erica were flower girls for our friends who got married yesterday, Andrea and Dan. The girls were so excited to finally be allowed to wear the wedding dresses and the wedding shoes (for longer than just a try-on). The wedding dresses were handmade by Grandma, with very twirly skirts. The girls had special bobby pins to hold back their hair, and white baskets filled with autumn leaves. There were secret extra bobby pins tucked into the baskets, under the leaves, because the girls kept pulling them out of their hair.

Emily and Erica did so well. They were so beautiful. They did not walk down the aisle by themselves. They both refused to let go of my hand at that moment, so I walked down the aisle with them. This is what happened at the rehearsal, too, so we were pretty much planning on doing it this way, unless Emily and Erica suddenly had some extra courage.

So we made it down the aisle and to our seats in the front row. The next challenge was making it through the ceremony quietly. During the rehearsal, Emily, especially had a hard time keeping quiet. She didn’t really have anything specific to say, but every time I asked her to whisper, she said things like, “I just want to talk a little bit,” and “I just want to talk louder.” Cute.

Before the ceremony started, we planted some sippy cups and Cheerios on our seats. So as soon as we got to them, I let the girls start eating Cheerios, thinking that it would them from talking. They must have been really hungry at that moment, because they started shoving the Cheerios into their mouths by the handful. I was so worried that we were making way too much noise crunching Cheerios. I tried to get them to slow down. . . to make the crunching a little quieter, and because I wasn’t sure that we had enough Cheerios to make it through the whole ceremony at the rate in which they were being consumed. In fact, a few minutes before the end, Emily ran out. And she started to ask, out loud, “More Cheerios, Mommy.” Then she noticed that a few Cheerios had fallen onto the floor, and she climbed down to eat them. I ignored that mom-instinct to not let your kids eat food off the floor, because those off-the-floor Cheerios bought me the extra minute of quiet we needed, before it was time to follow the newly-married Andrea and Dan back down the aisle.