Let Me Know When It's Time to Panic

My son Brett is getting married in September! We're delighted. We love Emily, and welcome her into the family.

I don't pay too much attention to wedding plans, as a general rule. I've been to plenty of weddings, but wasn't actually IN them. Not since I was sixteen and my older sister had a big High-Mass-in-Church wedding. I wore a yellow bridesmaid dress, and heels, and my hair was piled (precariously) on top of my head. Mass was in Latin back then, and the priests liked to spread a lot of incense around the altar. Standing at the altar without fainting that day was....difficult. My sister was radiant, though, so I made it through.
This picture was taken at the rehearsal dinner the night before. I had to wear a frilly dress. And drink a Shirley Temple. Already miserable.


Well, of course I've been married twice, so there's those two weddings. But the first time I wore blue jeans, as did Art, and we were married out by the fountain at the County Buildings, with a random clerk as our witness. We looked sort of like this.



My second wedding was a little less casual. We got married in a church, as a favor to Jeff's mom, and then had a reception in our backyard. I bought a special - but comfortable - dress to wear. It was a marvelous wedding. But then I discovered - after we'd exchanged vows, and everyone had taken a bazillion photos with the throwaway cameras we'd given them - that I was wearing my wedding dress backwards. OMG. OMG. OMG!!! I decided not to tell anyone. Thankfully I was carrying a big, beautiful (and distracting?) bunch of flowers. There were flowers everywhere that day....all around the church, and then in our backyard, on all the rented tables, and next to the musicians. (Thanks to my friends who went to the Farmer's Market that morning and bought all the flowers they had). So.....I like to think no one noticed that my dress was a little bit longer in the front than it was in the back. And that the waistline was.....wrong. And that I changed out of that dress a lot earlier than I'd planned to. Heh heh. It wasn't TOO bad, was it??

OMG.


All that to say, I'm not very good at the whole DRESS thing.

So I decided to google "Mother of the Groom," and prepare myself.

Did you know that, traditionally speaking, the mother of the groom is supposed to "show up, shut up, and wear beige"?? I found this on several websites, although a couple of them insisted that it's not true anymore. Which is too bad, because that would've been easy.

These days you're supposed be quite involved....from planning the Rehearsal Dinner to picking music for the "groom and mother" dance. A dance! In a dress! Double crikey crikey.
Well. I'll think about all that stuff later. For now....just a tiny glance at "dresses suitable for the Mother of the Groom," in the "informal daytime ceremony" section:



Hahahahahahahahaha!!!

So. Yeah. We'll shelve the whole "look for a dress online" idea.

I don't have to find a dress yet, do I?

OMG.

Let me know when it's time to panic.