the post-covid wedding that beat all odds

If there’s one thing I can definitively say about myself it is that I will never be a wedding planner. Oh, there’s still money to be made in that arena – people may actually pay me NOT to plan their weddings! I’m crafty, yes, but even my talent can’t perform well with a month of pulling together a post-Covid wedding + a week of hosting 8 guests in my 3-bedroom home including a 4-month-old baby and 3 granddogs. Disclosure: entertaining my new grandson was a delight. Love, love, love little Liam!

I’m bearing my soul here, folks, because I hate to reveal a crack in my brilliant artist façade to my readers. But here it is. The whole truth. Murphy’s Law at its finest.

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the cast

My youngest son and his bride actually exchanged their vows 2 years ago on some courthouse steps in rural Georgia before heading off to an army base in Louisiana. And in case you don’t know that wedding officiants sometimes follow the business model of ambulance-chasing injury attorneys, meet LaGayle. A tiny woman with a thick Southern drawl and vibrant blue eyeshadow who was worth every cent of that $40 to make the event special!

Fast forward to the present – the happy couple’s family has now grown by one sweet baby and 3 dogs. And they were all staying with me. 

the ill-fated wedding sign

A few weeks ago, I posted a tutorial on how I made a gorgeous wedding sign.

What I didn’t tell you is that when I first attempted to adhere the decals onto the glass, I was working on the floor. Bad idea. I accidentally placed my knee onto the glass and it shattered. Lesson 1 – Don’t use the floor as a working surface for crafts.  I ordered more decals, bought a new piece of glass, and as you can see in the tutorial, I used a bed for my working surface. Then I carefully placed the sign face-down on a piece of carpet in a corner of my basement for the glass to dry. However, a week before the wedding, my husband decides to make one of his yearly visits into the basement to inspect the furnace and convince himself that he’s a handy homeowner (he is not). Yep, my completely oblivious husband steps right on it. Shattered. Minutes later he sheepishly finds me and says, “I think something very bad has happened.” Lesson 2 – If your husband is not handy, keep your basement/workroom locked. But thanks to the wonderful Etsy artisan who once again cut me fresh decals overnight, I made a third sign.

why trying to look hip as the mother of the groom isn’t a good idea

Let me first say this. The bride is drop-dead gorgeous.

She has 2 sisters (also bridesmaids) that are young and sexy and beautiful. She also has a mother who is young and fit and attractive. I’m 16 years older than her mother and wasn’t about to let them dress me in a typical mother-of-the-groom beaded sheath dress with a matching jacket. So I decided to take my personal styling into my own hands. Big mistake. The gals in the wedding party invited me to join them for hair appointments that morning. I’m very particular about my own hair but didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so I went. Clever me also had a second clandestine hair & makeup appointment that afternoon with a chic salon in Cincinnati to ensure I looked like a million bucks. Lesson 3 – Don’t believe you are smarter than the bridesmaids. I left the salon with hair that would not move (even while standing in the middle of an open field during a tornado) and make-up that would would take a full 5 hours to remove. Forgive me if I abandon political correctness for a moment and just say that upon leaving the salon and walking into broad daylight, I snapped a selfie and discovered that I could pass for Caitlyn Jenner’s doppelganger.

the party bus

Caught up in all the excitement to see our out-of-town friends and family, I had hired Jimmy’s Limousine Service to provide guests with transportation to and from the wedding. However, most of our siblings did not feel comfortable traveling in the wake of Covid; my best friend’s sister-in-law died the week before the wedding so her family couldn’t make it; and my closest sister’s son contracted a serious staff infection. Oh, and the minister bailed at the last minute. I can’t make this shit up. Our guest list dwindled before my eyes.

Here’s how the day went down.  At 4 o’clock Jimmy called, bless his heart, and said that the sedan scheduled to pick me and a handful of other early arrivals up had been upgraded to a Mercedes limo bus. Only problem, schedules had changed and I was the only one needing to leave early. So when I boarded the party bus looking like Ms. Jenner, Driver Ron looked around at the console bar filled with cold ice and all the empty seats and asked, “Don’t you even have a drink?” Seriously, Ron? Obviously I have no drink and apparently I don’t even have any friends! It was a long, awkward ride to the venue. Lesson 4 – Bring drinks.

At 5 o’clock a shuttle bus arrived for the remaining guests, among them my nephew Cole who decided to act as the tour guide. He flew in from New York and knows nothing about Cincinnati, so he just made facts up. He also served a snack – 4 peanuts per person, claiming that Mr. Robbins had only purchased the economy package. All the while, Driver Tom, about 80 years old, never said a word. And did I mention that my nephew wore an umbrella hat?

Meanwhile, back at the venue, the very serious wedding photographer told me as guests were arriving that he still needed to speak with the clergy. To which I replied, “He’s on his way.” You guessed it, my nephew became ordained on the internet the day before and was also the minister. “He’s arriving now,” I told the photographer, as Cole climbed out of the party bus wearing… yep, his umbrella hat. 

a good hype man is hard to find

When I tell you that I have a long history of rapping at my nieces’ and nephews’ weddings, I know what you’re thinking. Another middle-aged woman who puts on a ball cap and gold chain who mistakenly thinks she can rap. Not so. I’m good. Honestly. And I started rapping even before it became mainstream. So my husband convinced me to come out of retirement and embarrass my son one last time. Let me just say this. A good hype man is hard to find in the conservative Midwest…. enters Cole. My hype man. Lesson 5 – Hire the same person as tour bus guide, minister, and hype man.

There’s so much more that could be said for this post-Covid wedding that beat all odds, but I think I’ll keep some secrets to myself. At the end of the day, it was great fun. Perhaps even more fun than a highly scripted fancy wedding at Tavern on the Green. It was filled with two families coming together as one, a beautiful young couple in love, a tired little four-month-old, and a middle-aged rapper now accepting gigs. 

And no, those were not my serious wedding shoes in the photo above; I only wore those for my rap.

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