Day 35: Wedding Bells

I was up far too early this morning to get dressed in jeans and one of my brother's shirts (the one he offered last night was blue and made me look like a pregnant mail carrier. Eventually I ended up with a deep red that was rather better, if huge). I hadn't thought to bring a button-down shirt of my own, and they were kind of necessary for hair madness.

I met my cousin and one of the other bridesmaids at the hair place, and we sat patiently while the hairdressers pulled and curled and sprayed and pinned and sprayed again. Eventually my hair went half-up and entirely curled, as did the other bridesmaid's hair, and my cousin's hair went partly up and a wreath of flowers was pinned to the top of her head. Thus adorned, we made a pit stop at our grandparents' for my dress, then headed back to my aunt's house (my cousin's mother) to meet up with the third bridesmaid, who'd done her own hair, and to handle makeup and dressing and so on and so forth.

My cousin's dress was red and gold - medieval style, sort of - and very pretty indeed (though she did have to be laced in). We bridesmaids were all in cream sundresses, the only requirements having been "cream," "knee-length," and "something you can wear again". The groomsmen wore black pants and white or cream shirts, and the groom's vest was red. Their son (bride & groom's son) matched the groom.

Then it was off to the church/hall (once a Catholic church, but it hasn't had a congregation in forty-something years) for the ceremony. It went of more or less without hitch, although the bridesmaids moved too fast and the ringbearer - the aforementioned son, who is 16 months old - tried to take the rings and so on and so forth... but no major issues.

Post-wedding we went to a relative's house for pictures, which was pretty quick - half an hour? Then it was back to my aunt's house for the reception. Lots of people... lots and lots of people... my grandparents have six kids. All of them were present (including my grandparents), along with their spouses and all of the grandchildren save two. Add in families of grandchildren, plus the other side of my cousin's family, plus the groom's extended family...

Lots of people.

But that was pretty painless too, and I sat around with various cousins and cousins-in-law and aunts and talked and ate lunch and posed for pictures, and everything went off smoothly. On the one hand I recognize that it was a low-key wedding (no Bridezillas!) but, on the other hand, in the unlikely event that I get married, I think I will elope.

...in a long white dress, though.