Wedding Cues (Part 3)

So we were married and all, but no honeymoon yet. There was still plenty to do before the September 28 main event. (Though I have always wondered, after weeks of preparation, endless concerns, sleeplessness, etc. do newly weds actually have the energy to have a honeymoon imemdiately after the wedding? Will they even be in the mood?)

From Smokey Mountain, DH took me to my apartment to pick up my wedding gown. He was going to drop me off at a hotel where I will be staying the night. Purportedly to get a bride's beauty sleep.

So he carries the long box containing the wedding gown, puts in on top of the car to help me in the car, gets in the driver's seat, and off we go. At the hotel parking lot, we both alight. He turns to get the gown, and suddenly there was this most ridiculous expression on his face. With nary a word, he gets in the car again and speeds off, leaving me in the darkened parking lot.

You surmise correctly. He forgot to put the wedding gown in the car. Although it was a relatively short drive from the apartment to the hotel, alot could happen in those few minutes. And he has to slowly track his way back to the apartment in the dark.

Lucky for him (I would have torn him from limb to limb otherwise), he found the gown lying in the middle of Kalayaan. Because of it's ivory fabric, the gown sort of glowed in the dark, and the few passersby there were were eyeing it warily. Thankfully, no vehicle ran over it or I may have marched to Pachelbel Canon with tire marks running down my gown. DH must have sighed a huge sigh of relief before bringing the gown to the hotel. Me? I just had the sneaking suspicion that maybe, just maybe, his subconscious was trying to stop the wedding from happening.

"All the things that can go wrong will go wrong." I could kill Murphy - if I knew his last name and he were still alive.

The makeup artists one of my Maids of Honor commissioned arrived late. So the whole bridal entourage was late to the wedding. The traffic didn't help any. And oh, this would be a good time to thank Honeytess who chauffeured us to the venue in her metallic lilac car. No chauffeur has ever been sexier nor a bridal car cooler.

Meanwhile, until the last minute, DH was busy making sure that the reception was flawless. An hour before the wedding, he went to his best man's house (he lived near the venue) to shower and change. Thirty minutes before the wedding, he was trying to break into his own car because he left his barong and the car keys inside. His Best Man advised him to just smash the windows in, because they would be late. Fortunately for the car, a passersby was an expert in picking up door locks with a clothes hanger. (I hate to think what he does for a living.) Dressed in his barong, DH was all ready to step out, when he realized he left his shoes at home. (Sabotage, I tell you.) No Best man has ever been asked to live to his role fully, down to providing shoes for the groom.

DH aged so much during the past nerve-wracking week, that when my aunt saw him at the reception, she thought she was introducing herself to the groom's father! "Good afternoon po, kayo po ba ang tatay ni Toym? Haha.

Thankfully, everything went well after that. We didn't even know that the priest from the chapel tried to stop the wedding - because he thought that we were proceeding with the marriage rites without proper authorization - until later.

As we couldn't have the actual marriage rites, Fr. Remigio changed the script. He asked all the wedding sponsors to say a few words about the bride and the groom instead of holding a mass. But we still had the traditional lighting of candles, veils and cords, exchanging of rings and vows. After all, we had the complete line up.

More than complete in fact. We had two best men and two maids of honors. My groom's idea of a joke. If you knew the best men, whom I have known long before I knew DH, you would be in on it too.

Most of our family and friends didn't know that a wedding already happened before the September 28 formal event. It was like getting married again, with all the trimmings this time. And oh I now know the answer to my questions about honeymoons. Ask me when we see each other.

And so it came to pass that we celebrate our anniversary two days in a row.