My oldest daughter is getting married.
For months now I have been planning, conceptualizing, and pinning things to Pinterest boards.
I have vacillated through various emotional stages, as mothers of daughters do in times like…..well, ALL of the times,
and I thought that I had landed mostly on acceptance.
I love my daughter.
I trust her,
I adore who she’s marrying,
and I trust him, as well.
I was sure I was fine now.
All systems were go,
until yesterday when we met with the
wedding planner.
I am fairly certain I kept it looking cool and collected while we sat there in that barn discussing caterers and clean-up costs,
but inside I was NOT fine.
Was that crying outside?
Stop tapping your foot.
Now it’s hot.
Was that an owl I just heard?
On the outside I had winged eyeliner and beautiful jingley cerulean earrings,
but inside my head there was a sound like a tea kettle whistle.
I was oddly hot, and was that a cymbal?
My hearing kept going out and randomly coming back in just in time to hear bursts of phrases like “chafing dishes” and “the linen fee.”
As the prices were mentioned casually,
I found myself thinking things like,
“I mean, does anyone really NEED plates? Plates really are more of a SUPPOSED need that modern American culture has impressed on us, and maybe it’s time to release that pressure. Maybe there’s something beautiful in holding your sustenance in your own palm…”
I want this wedding to be what my daughter dreams.
I really do, but friends,
I realized today that I have become George Banks.
I have become the Father of the Bride.
I identify now with his every crazy-seeming move.
I feel it.
I am one step away from removing hot dog buns from packages in their displays.
We may soon be exactly alike as I wander
mentally adrift in a store, mumbling about cost effectiveness.
I am here Pinteresting things like gorgeous grazing platters on natural-edged wood planks while simultaneously wondering if a Tostito Pizza Roll themed reception could
be a thing.
I realized this morning, as I got ready for church, that I have rubbed my temples so much in the last few months that I have begun to rub my actual EYEBROWS off of one side of my face.
Not my eyebrow makeup.
My actual, came-from-hair-follicles eyebrows.
Who has one and a half eyebrows?!
This girl.
Because of course I do.
Because it’s not difficult enough to wonder how you can look good in full-body Spanx in the dead of summer in a barn with no shade,
but now you have to do it with 1.5 eyebrows.
Watch me whip.
I know that weddings can happen with just a couple of signatures and a Costco cake,
and that so many people are about to tell me that,
but that just isn’t me.
I like to make things nice, and memorable, and beautiful.
I want to do it.
I want her to have her budding eucalyptus runners, and her wood-round centerpieces.
I want to conquer a banging charcuterie table, and so help me, I might just find a place for a metal wedding hoop.
Don’t know what that is?
Might as well look it up.
You may just be a George Banks soon, yourself.
You will never be ready for it.
I once went to a wedding held at a step down from the Grange.
There was cyclone wire around the parking lot.
There were no flowers; not even outside.
During those sacred nuptials,
the groom drove the wedding rings up to meet him and the bride at the front on the back of an RC car.
My entire family got food poisoning after that wedding.
Now, I’m not drawing any direct correlations, but that couple lasted one year.
So, here I am,
carefully walking the line between bounty and budget.
Trying not to think about how fast we went from my girl’s high-chair to Head-table, and
trying to give her what she wants without also giving myself a stroke.
I see you, George Banks.
I see you.
I am you.
I’m sure I will stress out and continue rubbing off my eyebrows until I see my girl at the end of that aisle,
when nothing else in this world will matter to me but the woman I watched her become.
I’m sure I will worry about the food until I sit at one of those 8 person round tables with white linens that are not included in the price completely unable to eat for what the enormity of that moment has done to the pit of my stomach.
I’m sure that all of these questions that feel like they need answers right now will seem so insignificant when held up to the question I will ask myself as she stands there waiting to walk down that aisle:
Wouldn’t I do it –
Every gray hair inducing part of it –
all over again
all for her?
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
