Practice Makes Perfect!! . . . unless you’re two.

If you’ve been around for a while, you remember the fairy-tale-like trying on of Flower girl dresses. Well, the wedding has finally arrived. Gina is getting married tomorrow!!!

Last night was rehearsal. Ali was quite excited about her flower girl role.

The TWO YEAR OLD flower girl.

The fact that I am willing to attempt this shows you that I am willing to do anything for a good blog post how much I truly love Gina.

We’ve of course been talking this up like crazy. We even practiced dropping petals with AJ at Aldridge Gardens on Monday.

(Before the Garden police come and get me, they were ALREADY FALLEN OFF THE BUSH flowers, thankyouverymuch.)

So. We got to rehearsal, and the first thing Ali received was her basket, or, in toddler speak, her “pretty pretty purse”:

Then I put her wreath on too, and she couldn’t have been more thrilled:

We spent a good bit of time before rehearsal trying to get adjusted to the church, and Ali was sure to have a heart to heart with the bride:

Our concern #1 (out of about 965) is that Ali will refuse to walk down the aisle out of fear. So our strategy was that I would sit on the second row (possibly with candy, if necessary) and Chris would be in the back with Ali. Because Ali will ALWAYS come to Mommy, especially if she’s scared.

The downside to this strategy, however, is that it put Chris in charge of all last minute flower girl instructions:

. . . and when she wasn’t dropping her petals, HE was the one who had to give her a demonstration.
Isn’t that the best trail of pieces of torn-up paper that you’ve ever seen??

It worked. The next time she dropped one petal.
Of course she had to stand and stare at it until it fluttered to the ground.

With a bit more coaching, it appeared that she was ready for practice.
Of course, during the actual practice, she practically ran down the left-completely-petalless aisle.

Now. I must cover an important point. In all of our discussions of the wedding, I never thought to ask Gina if she wanted Ali to stand on stage during the wedding.

Or, more likely how I would have phrased it would have been, “You’re not insane enough to want a TWO YEAR OLD running, jumping, talking, possibly crying, fidgeting, pulling up her dress, sitting down, playing games, and NEVER STANDING STILL FOR A SINGLE SECOND to be on your stage on the most important day of your life, are you?”

Um, well, she did.

I of course told her that she was stark mad, but because I loved her, we could give it a try during rehearsal to let her see how completely insane she was see if it would work.

Strategy #1: Hold hands with the maid of honor.
Or more realistically: play “rosies” around and around the Maid of Honor.

And that was all before the bride walked in.

Okay. So far, so good.
A half a second later, she was in the choir loft.

Then Gina, in an effort to make this two-year-old-on-the-stage thing work, told Ali, “If you ever get scared, you can come hold my hand.”

Of course, another half a second passed, and:
But she didn’t stay long. She got back to wandering around, checking out the choir loft, talking loudly, and in general doing what two year olds do.

By this point, she was losing all semblance of paying attention.
But then again, even the maid of honor was texting from stage. So she wasn’t the only one.

However, after Ali repeating from the stage at least 50 times, “Mommy can I come down to hold you?” and finally getting a quivering chin, we ended up like this for the rest of the rehearsal:

And even THAT didn’t come without her clapping and saying “YAAAAAY” every couple of minutes, fidgeting, and finally getting in her own chair:

I think that Gina saw the light. It might have been the point at which I told her, “If you want her on stage, she WILL be a COMPLETE distraction the ENTIRE wedding. But if that’s what you want, that’s fine with me.”

So the plan at this point is for her to walk down the aisle, sit in my lap on the second row (hopefully somewhat quietly), and then walk back down the aisle holding the ring bearer’s hand during the processional.

Oh – and did I mention that the wedding is during naptime?

It won’t be anything if it’s not interesting.