She walked!
Of course the bride walked, she walked very nicely. But I was a little concerned about YaYa and the other flower girl, and so it was a sigh of relief when they tottered down the aisle together. There were a couple of false starts when I handed the other flower girl her flowers and she kept throwing them on the ground. And wouldn't you know, we waited forever for some family members to show up before we could start the wedding, and then right as the little girls decided they both needed to pee pee, they were ready to go. I came out of the bathroom to a panicked wedding party. "RAE!" they shouted, and gestured for me to herd the little girls towards the door.
I'm exhausted from herding little girls. Also from many late nights and the crazy job of taking wedding photos. My Superstar husband and I really busted it out, him more than me, and we are very happy with the results. (I took the above photo of the bride on Friday, two days before the Sunday wedding. Just so you can orient yourself on the timeline, here.)
One of the highlights of the wedding was the number of tourists who snapped pictures of the wedding party as we walked around Queen Elizabeth Park. You wonder why people bother to take photos of somebody else's wedding, and I think I have it narrowed down to one of two things.
1. People thought that the wedding party was a group of rock stars, or
2. People had simply never seen a wedding party that looked like this one, and they nudged each other, "Hey Betty, have you ever in your entire life seen anything like that?" before capturing some not-so-subtle clicks, while the bride continued to politely ask people to stop taking pictures.
More highlights:
The fact that my brother looked a little like Johnny Depp in Benny and Joon in his wedding clothes.
The bride laughing her way through her vows. (She was overcome.)
Taking photos at a spot where a photographer waited in line for his turn to use the location, having some portfolio shots to do of a woman wearing nothing but silver spandex pants and some strategically placed electrical tape.
Lara (the bride) climbing a ladder on the side of a train car for us, in her dress and high heels, just to get a great shot. I know. It's crazy. But she loved the idea even more than we did, if that's possible.
Wedding food.
Leafy Boy and his dancing.
My speech, which did include numbers 2 and 8 from a couple of posts back, and which my brother told me touched him immensely.