Mud Puddle Drama

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Lauren has challenged us to write about a fiasco for the Friday's Favorite F word link up, and since she wrote one about her wedding, and I heart weddings like a fifteen year old girl, I'm going with it.

I was a fairly relaxed bride. My main issue with wedding planning was other people telling me what to do with my wedding, or making plans without my consent. But other than that, I found my engagement and weeks leading up to my wedding so fun.

If I couldn't afford something, I would convince myself I didn't want it. (I paid for college on my own debt free. I have a thousand more tricks like that.) It was in a miserable month in California, August, but it made for a neat six month engagement. And after all, I was going to the chapel, rather my childhood church, and getting married.

My fiasco wasn't an actual one, but I thought it was at the time.

The morning before my wedding, I had a little bridal shower (my big one was three weeks prior). There was around 25 women, lots of fresh fruit, and plenty of laughter. I was completely relaxed, and according to the pictures of that day, somehow I had a slight tan. I'm still confused how that happened. After the shower, I hung out with my cousin/bridesmaid, Jess, as she prepared my wedding cake (and frosting, my favorite).  Nibbling on cake and frosting, enjoying time with cousins I hadn't seen in years--I was a happy bride.

A couple hours [too late] before the rehearsal dinner was to start, I loaded up a carful of sisters and a cousin or two to pack up the rest of my stuff and pack wedding stuff to take to the church. Once I got home, I called my brother, and then Stephen, making sure the guys all knew that they needed to wear slacks to the rehearsal dinner.
The wedding was in a gorgeous church, my bridesmaids and I would be adorable, and since Californian dress standards are nil, I wanted to make sure we all looked decent together. For some reason, it was incredibly important to me that all the guys be wearing slacks. Ordinarily I don't care about controlling the fabric people wear.

My brother pretended he owned no slacks, because brothers do that. I told him to buy some. Sisters do that.
However, the phone call to Stephen went differently. The groomsmen that were staying with him hadn't brought dressy clothes for the rehearsal dinner (they thought). Why, I'll never know. Furthermore, none of them had any intention of wearing slacks at the rehearsal dinner.

I know, I know. Slacks. Fabric. Not important at all. Not normally. But they were to me at that time, and I was not a woman to be trifled with. So, of course, I did the perfectly reasonably thing and burst out bawling. Groomsmen in shorts at the rehearsal dinner would no longer groomsmen, I declared. Uneven numbers would just have to be! It was completely uncharacterstic of my usual self to be a dress code enforcer, but that day, it was important.

But I couldn't stay on the phone long--I had a rehearsal to make. I threw my things together, clothes mixing with wedding fixings, and loaded it all in my little Aveo. It was hot out, a usual California summer day, and I was running around outside. My face was sweaty, my legs were dusty, and as I was running out of the house one last time, my sandal clad foot stepped in a random mud puddle. Mud sloshed over my foot in the most non-bridal pedicure ever.

A mud puddle.  In California. In August. One of those things does not belong.

Someone had left a hose running for a while, filling one of the dips in my mom's dirt driveway. Oila, mud puddle in August.

Men in shorts instead of slacks and bride with muddy feet.

I laughed. Hysterically. I couldn't help it. Muddy feet do that to a person.

This image looks nothing like how I did. But it's pretty, and look, mud!

Thanks to the help of my mom and cousins, everything reached its place, and I finally made it the church, where my best friend greeted me with make up, clothes, and a place to wash my muddy feet. And then I saw the groomsmen, all wearing slacks. Some already had them. Some had just bought them. Some had wives that had packed them, just in case. And they all got to be groomsmen. ;)

And the next day, I got married. Everyone had pants on--the right ones, and the mud was long gone from my feet.