In Which The Bride (Almost) Had to Step Over the Flower Girl.

Ali was thrilled that the long awaited day to wear her pretty pretty princess dress was finally here.

She was also happy that Gina was getting married, but that was a side issue.

On the way there, I tried explaining to Ali about marriage. I asked her who she wanted to marry, and she quickly responded, “I don’t want to marry!! I want to run away!!”.

To which her Daddy pumped his fist and said, “Yeah, baby!!”

We got to the Church and found a Sunday School room that we could camp out in. Then we began the princess transformation:

with the help of DoggieBear, of course:

Daddy helped put on all of her jewelry:

Before putting on her tiara, we decided to check on everyone else’s progress in the sanctuary. Ali was thrilled that there was “A Rainbow, Mommy!!!! A RAINBOW!!!” on the stage.

No one else was nearly ready for pictures (or even anywhere to be found), so we took the opportunity for a few family pictures:

Then we went ahead and carefully placed her “hat” on her head.
Which, of course, she took off painfully (I had it clipped on with five little clippies) FOUR TIMES before the wedding started. Once RIGHT before it started, to which I hurriedly got it back on.

After a while, we decided that we better go find the Bride and check on things.

Who knew that the Bride was in the two year old Sunday School and had so many toys to play with??

Finally picture time.

Dreaming about having a bouquet of her own. . .

And then her basket was magically filled with flower petals!! She had to show Mandy, the bridesmaid, right away!

Sometime during all of this, my camera battery decided that it had had enough and started flashing at us. Of course, this sent me into a panic. I mean – I promised pictures!! I asked around to see if anyone had a compatible charger. No luck. We debated whether there was enough time for Chris to run to Wal-Mart, assuming that Wal-Mart would have the right battery.

I finally calmed down enough to realize that it would last long enough, and, after all, I wasn’t going to be taking pictures DURING the wedding. It’s just hard for a blogger to live without a working camera by her side!!

It was almost time for the wedding, so we grabbed someone to take a family picture really quickly before my battery died (which it miraculously never actually did, thank goodness!):
And then it was time.

As we practiced in rehearsal, I sat on the second row and Chris went in the back with Ali. The plan was that she would walk down, hopefully drop a petal or five, and then sit in my lap, hopefully quietly, until the end of the ceremony, at which time she would walk out holding the ring bearer’s hand.

The grandparents came. . .the parents came. . .the ring bearer came. . .the bridesmaid came. . .I was getting nervous and excited all at once.

Then Ali walked out. She took her time starting down the aisle, but didn’t seem scared.

No flowers were dropped, of course, but this didn’t surprise me too much.

She got to where she was even with me, and I motioned for her to come sit in my lap. She promptly sat down, right in the middle of the aisle, poofy dress and all, and stated loudly, “I sit!”.

It looked quite akin to this:
With that same look, too, actually.

I motioned and whispered, but to no avail.

There was quite the murmur of chuckles throughout the Church.

Just in time for the bridal march, I finally leaned out into the aisle and picked her up, to which she thankfully didn’t protest.

Of course, during the wedding, she gave me commentary from time to time, despite my whispers that we had to be quiet.

“There’s fire up there!!”

“There’s Alex, Mommy!!”

“They’re lighting the candles, Mommy!!”

“I have to be quiet, Mommy.”

“There’s Alex, Mommy!!”

But her chatter didn’t seem to disturb the moment:

When the ceremony was getting close to the end, I started prepping her to walk back down the aisle with Lucas. Lucas was older and quite tall, dark and handsome. She had been in awe of him the whole time, so she was very excited about this turn of events.

However, when Lucas came down the aisle and I pushed her towards him, she couldn’t get over her shyness to take his hand. He tried and tried, but with no luck.

She trailed behind him for a few rows, then turned around and called out to me, “Mommy hold your hand!!”.

So, naturally, I got up and walked her out, to another murmur of chuckles.

So all in all, her interruptions were actually quite cute and funny, not bone-chilling and nervousness-inducing, such as if she had refused to walk the aisle or had started screaming and crying or something.

And anyway, Gina even said on my last post that she wanted Ali to provide some entertainment.

And that she did.

Here are a few more of my favorite pictures:

Congratulations, Gina! We love you!