Monday, June 16, 2008

The Wedding Day

Okay, Fans. Your voices have been heard. Yes, I have taken an extended vacation from my own blog. Basically, I have wasted lots of computer time playing Word Twist and Scrabulous on Face Book. I learned how to make a photo album on Face Book, and I made so many albums that people were sick of seeing my albums. I have no more excuses. Abby is off on a missions trip. Mr. Sinta is on a business trip. Ryan is busy doing other things. The dog is fed. My small group Bible study lessons are caught up. It is time to tell the story...

Aimee left the house early on her wedding day with Brent. They drove to Jenna's who did Aimee's hair. Beautifully.

Megan came over to our house with the sound equipment for the wedding. Because of denominational rules, there are no instruments allowed at weddings in the church. Megan graciously offered to bring sound equipment, and since that is her job while she is in college, she actually knows how to set it up, and got a great deal for us: she did it for free! The fun part of having recorded music is that you can have exactly what you want. Exactly. No shrieking soloists or sweaty pianists or twanging guitarists who talk too much. (Mr. Sinta despises worship leaders who are talking heads. If we wanted them to talk, they would be pastors...shut up and sing.)

The phone rang and it was the Cake Lady telling me that she thought her son had already delivered our cake at the appointed time, but when she looked in his room, he was still sound asleep. By this time, he had missed the contact person at the church. Also, the frosting on the cake oxidized so it was bright yellow and not pale yellow. By the way, the only roses she could find to put on the cake at Costco were also of the bright yellow variety. She did not mention that she completely forgot about sending the wedding cupcakes that we ordered or that she shorted us on the hand pressed mints. WE ARE NOT LIKELY TO RECOMMEND THE CAKE LADY TO ANYONE ELSE.

I tried to call Aimee and warn her that the cake was late, but forthcoming, and I found her cell phone's service did not work in Midvale. (Maybe, I said to myself, it is better that she does not know all of this. She and Brent are supposed to be meeting the photographer early. We want a happy bride.)

Eventually, we were all ready enough to pack up and leave. I somehow ran out of time at the end and dumped out someone's graduation present bag and loaded it with my essential makeup and threw it in my car. Of course, I noticed at this point that I did not have enough gas to make it to Midvale, but I did not want to have to tell Mr. Sinta who is a stickler for leaving on time. (Mr. Sinta, Megan and Abby were traveling in the truck.) I was incredibly thankful when Abby called me on my cell just before we passed Megan's workplace to tell me that they needed a subber or woofer or connector or something, and I used the 180 seconds to squeal into the gas station, run my card through the pump and literally splash out enough gas to easily get me to Midvale and then a little more because Aimee and Brent were going to borrow my car and I did not want them stranded in Midvale for their honeymoon, gasless and unhappy. I ran back into my car, started it up and headed to Vista Ave. just in time to meet the truck and get on the Freeway. Yikes!!! That was close.

We drove happily down the road for some time, and eventually Mr. Sinta decided we should stop at a convenience store to pick up some sort of snacks during the two hour drive. I tried to order a sandwich at the in store food place, but some complete twit was taking his sweet time ordering for his family of five and he did not really know what they wanted so I settled for a bag of salted something and a cold pop that was accidentally too large, would not fit in the cup holder and had to be held between my legs. No danger of falling asleep on this trip.

At approximately 11 a.m. I called Ryan to remind him that yes, today is Aimee's wedding day, and he has one hour to take a shower and two hours to drive here to make it to the service. In just a few moments, he called me back to ask me where the maps to the wedding were.

This is a critical point in my story, because I want to tell you ahead of time, so you do not wet your pants, that I lived through what I am about to tell you.

While I was trying to tell Ryan where the leftover maps from the invitations were, and what they looked like, Mr. Sinta, just ahead of me in his truck passed a car. This made me feel intimidated because while I could tell Ryan where the maps were, I had no idea how to get to the church myself, other than by following Mr. Sinta. So, I did one of the stupidest things that I have ever done in my entire life. While talking on the cell phone, I attempted to pass the car that was now ahead of me on the narrow two lane country road. Too late, I realized that there was an oncoming car and now there was no time to go back to my spot in the line of traffic. I was in 5th gear in the VW Turbo bug, but when I tried to max the gas, for some reason, I did not accelerate. I am now in a great position to star in my own Signal 20 movie. We used to watch Signal 20 movies in high school driver's ed. The title of my movie would be Late Mother of the Bride Makes Her Last Phone Call.

The three occupants of the truck informed me later that they are now screaming at me at the top of their lungs. I am sure that this is an all out effort to save my life. It is too bad that I could not hear them, however, I could see death approaching at about 55 m.p.h.

I am very thankful for the person who was now driving behind me who slowed down considerably probably praying and hoping that I would move back into my spot on the correct side of the road. I am also very thankful for the oncoming car who slowed down and pulled to the shoulder because they lacked an Eminent Death Wish, and I had won the Chicken Game by default. I am reminded of my late Aunt Alice (She did not die in a car accident, but in a nursing home because she lived her life carefully and wisely.), who said that God watches over drunks and the feeble minded. This was the grace of God. I lived. Many times that day, I said these words: I am so glad to be alive. Probably not the usual thing for most mothers of the bride to say, but true in my case.

At this point, the problems with the cake, and any other problems, paled in significance.

However, pretty much there weren't any other problems. Eventually the cake came, and no one cared that it was SCREAMING BRIGHT YELLOW instead of pale yellow because it was chocolate marble with a white chocolate filling and it tasted really great. However, I am getting ahead of myself.

We arrived intact at the church, and got dressed in the empty parsonage next door. The photographer arrived a little late. (I was hoping that she had not witnessed my driving stunt.) She was pleasant and very pretty with an air of confident expectation. I wrote out her check and hoped that she was as talented as she seemed. Katy is someone I would recommend to others.

She took photos of the girls preparing, and then of the bridal party, and then the parents and grandparents etc. So many friends came that it was really fun to be the mom and be one of the last people seated. Yes, time to socialize and pass out bubbles (not rice). Aimee was incredibly relaxed and beautiful. She looked like Barbie. Her hair was perfect. Everything was perfect. Her bouquet was outstanding. Her dress was gorgeous, white with a navy tie at the waist. She wore a tiara and an elbow length veil that was very lovely.

Mr. Sinta told me later that as the two of them waited outside the church, he kissed her, put down her veil, and wondered how in the world he would make it through this. He was already starting to cry, and they were not even in the church. This is very tender because I have known Mr. Sinta for 27 years, and he almost never cries. Most of the times that I have seen him cry, it was because he was laughing so hard that he had to cry. He has cried at maybe two movies. He cried when our first baby died. He is not one given to tears. That tells you deeply this was affecting him.

The groomsmen led in the moms and went up front with Brent and the pastor. The bridesmaids came in, very carefully, I might add because they had stilettos and they had to navigate a 3 foot grate with tiny holes in the middle of the aisle! Success. No one stumbled. Our worship leader, Jenn A., led us, sans instruments, in a hymn. We willingly complied with the no instruments rule, but we never bothered to check if they minded female worship leaders. We know of one Boise church that was decimated by the thought of a female worship leader. It appeared that no one minded. Everyone loves Jenn. However the photographer seems to have caught her smoking dope at the reception. We have no proof other than the photo.

The pastor made a few announcements, and then Aimee's music started. She had music from... This is terrible. I can't remember. The movie with the ring and the short guys with hairy feet. Lord of the Rings! That's it. It was something very beautiful. She was very beautiful. Our great photographer really captured a lot of great moments, and I do not remember ever seeing her take a single picture. She was invisible.

Any way, when the pastor said, "Who gives this woman?" Mr. Sinta said, "Her mother and I." My emotions, other than still being very glad to be alive and not in a bloody mass at the Midvale morgue, was, "Yes!!! This is awesome. These two were meant for each other." Mr. Sinta's voice cracked, and I loaned him Kleenax. I think that when Brent heard Paul's voice that he teared up as well. It was very emotional. I did not cry. It was a happy, beautiful, wonderful, joyful thing to me, not something to cry about. I did not expect that. (The funny thing is, I cried at my own wedding. My shoulders shook. I was so happy to finally get married that I sobbed. I was all of 20 years old.)

It was a beautiful service, beautiful and simple. Aimee kept emphasizing that she wanted a simple wedding. It was a wise thing to want.

The building was very adequately sized for a wedding of about 150 people, which was good because we had about that many people, but there was no place for a reception line so the bridal party all lined up outside the church (it was a beautiful day) and shook hands with everyone. The very funny thing was that then we all went back in the church for the reception! No one minded. Like I said, it was a simple and beautiful wedding.

The crowd was seated watching Aimee and Brent get their photo taken with the cake, but then it was time to serve cake, and nothing was happening. I asked Mr. Sinta to either pray for the cake or announce it was being served. He did something that was absolutely wonderful instead.
He wrapped one arm around Brent and one arm around Aimee and he prayed a father's blessing over their marriage. It was extremely beautiful, simple and unexpected. It made one young woman cry who witnessed it. Amazingly, Katy caught it on film. Anyway, then we all ate cake and talked and Megan caught the bouquet and we blew bubbles and told them good bye and packed up their gifts and cleaned up the building and tried to leave.

At this point, you are probably already thinking that I have done my idiotic act for the day, and that I couldn't possibly do anything to top it. I am about to top it.

Paul, Abby and Megan are in the truck, Brian and Devon (They are incredibly fun relatives from Utah who came to the wedding and were going to spend the night with us) were in their car, and I was supposed to drive Aimee's car home. In my haste to not fall behind the wagon train, I jammed the key in the ignition and could not get it out. Eventually Mr. Sinta got most of the key out, but it was the trunk key. Now, we could not get the trunk open to get my stuff out of the car, and we could no longer get the correct key in the ignition because a part of a broken trunk key was jammed in there. I felt extremely ridiculous. Even I do not normally do two things like this in one day.

To make things worse, at this point, we got a call from Aimee and Brent, and they were headed back to the church before they left on their honeymoon because they forgot something. Megan and Abby and I looked at each other and promised not to tell them anything about what I had just done to Aimee's car so they would not worry about it. It worked. They never suspected.

Brian and Devon let me ride in their car back to Boise. I was really glad not to drive. Extremely glad. It was so much fun to be with them that I was not able to sit and think about the fact that my very wonderful oldest daughter, middle child, was now married, and would not be coming back to live at our house anymore. I am very glad that Brian had lots of stuff to tell me about his church and ministry because I never got that sad, let-down-she-is-gone feeling.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end of our wonderful day. I am so glad to be alive.

P.S. I have now progressed to being very happy that she is very happy! It only took three weeks to get the car fixed, and I am behind on my ironing because my iron was in the trunk, but eventually I will catch up. Aimee has yet to move most of her stuff in her room in the basement. It is still a huge mess; so, in one way, it seems she is still with us.

3 comments:

SprinklerBandit said...

Brent actually suspected something was up, but he had the kindness to not mention it to me.

Thanks for the update. I miss your regular bloggings.

Mrs. Sinta said...

Brent is a very discerning man who will probably never really get a surprise party.

Unknown said...

Awwwww that's such a fun story!