So this is the post I was planning to write yesterday....
On June 4th, 2011, my best friend Mel married a wonderful guy named Derek. I was honored to be a bridesmaid, which was my first foray into the world of wedding parties, and it was honestly so much fun! It was really wonderful to spend some quality time with Mel's mom (whom I call "mom"), and it was great to see her older sister, Rachel, for probably the first time since Mel and I graduated high school. Rachel was the matron of honor, and I had a blast with her and the other two bridesmaids, Mary and Debbie, and the pianist, Kristen, who were friends of Mel's from college. We all helped decorate the beautiful little church, which is right across the street from the school where I work, which was lots of fun. After the rehearsal dinner at the ever-amazing Der Dutchman, we went back to Mel's grandparents' house and wound up with one of the best bachelorette-party-gone-wrong stories ever!
Everything started out pretty low-key, because we were all exhausted, especially Mel. Rachel decided we had to watch some home movies from Mel's first birthday, and while the bride kept protesting that this was dumb and everyone was bored to death, we all laughed and laughed and kept track of the number of times baby Mel fell on her face. Then Rachel, who was insistent that her little sister have something akin to a real party, took us all outside for sparklers. After that, she sent Mel on a little fool's errand inside the house while she passed out cans of silly string. When Mel came back out, we attacked and chased her all the way down the street, which resulted in me spending a good 15 minutes picking little bits of colored goo out of her gorgeous curly hair. Then we went back inside for a bit.
I was just about ready to head for home, and Mel was just about asleep, when Rachel waltzed in again, blindfolded the bride, and marched her out to the car. She announced we were going to take Mel somewhere and leave her to be rescued by Derek. I climbed into the car that belonged to Kristen and her husband Daniel, Mel, and Mary. Debbie and Mel's cousins Jason and Sydney went in Rachel's car. I figured we were just going to drive to the park a few blocks away or something, but no -- we followed Rachel for nearly half an hour, all the way to Marysville, including a random turn-around in a driveway to throw the still-blindfolded Mel off track. After that turn-around, everyone in our car felt a small jolt, like we'd hit an animal on the road, and I couldn't see it from where I was sitting, but a whole bunch of lights suddenly lit up on the dashboard. Once we reached Marysville, Rachel turned into a Walgreens parking lot, just hoping to regroup and tell her about all the calls her crew had been making to Derek while we were on the road. As soon as we parked, however, Kristen and Daniel's car died. As in, completely quit functioning. The guys immediately started poking around under the hood and determined that one of the belts (I forget which one now) had given out.
So there we were, stuck in the parking lot of a closed drug store in a small town around 12:30 AM on the day of the wedding. We called Derek and his brother, who had been waiting at the nearby Wal-Mart, where we were supposed to meet them, and we determined that the whole groom-seeing-the-bride-before-the-wedding doesn't count till the sun comes up. Some of us had to use the bathroom, so Rachel drove Mel, Mary, and me over to Wal-Mart, where we used the facilities and Rachel bought a jumbo box of ice cream bars. When we got back to the Walgreens lot, the dead car had been towed, Mel's pastor was there telling stories like only he can, and her aunt was on her way with a working vehicle. After Aunt Lisa got there, we sat around in the parking lot for probably an hour, listening to Pastor's stories of bachelor parties he attended when he was younger (they once put a totally smashed groom-to-be on a commercial plane the night before his wedding!). We finally decided we ought to go when it was almost 2:00 and a police car drove slowly by the parking lot for the third time. I told Mel it's all going in my novel someday.
The next day, everything went wonderfully. My sister came along with me to the church, and she was a big help, putting on Mel's nails and doing Debbie's hair and running little errands for Mom. She did my hair while we were still at home, and it looked amazing! Pictures went pretty smoothly, thanks to Rachel running a tight ship, and they were a lot of fun. We were all highly amused by the ring bearer, a family friend of Mel's, and the flower girl, Derek's niece, who wouldn't even talk to each other at the rehearsal but had to be restrained from running around the sanctuary together while everyone else was taking pre-wedding photos. Mel was incredibly gorgeous and just seemed happy. Derek was adorably nervous. The ceremony was beautiful, and the only tiny hiccup was the flower girl deciding that she wanted to go sit with her mom in the second row after about twenty minutes, and that was way more cute than problematic. The reception was at a local park, and it was insanely hot, but that didn't stop us from having a great time. They had buttercream-frosted cupcakes and orange punch, and their cake toppers were Han Solo and Ariel, the Little Mermaid. I got to see a lot of good friends whom I hadn't seen in quite a while, and everything was just sunny and happy and wonderful.
This post has gotten sufficiently long, so I'll write about the crazy thing that happened after the reception in tomorrow's post. I'll leave you with some of my favorite pictures from the wedding:
Mary, Debbie, Rhiannon, Mel, Rachel, and me
Best friends since eighth grade <3
Mr. and Mrs. Derek Glynn!
Mel and my parents
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