wedding changes

You would think with my third weddings in three summers, I would know exactly how to pull it off without blinking twice.
I didn’t. No even with multiple lists. The more lists I made, the more lists I lost this year and the more exasperated the looks as I talked my way through re-writing the lists.
Lost lists reflected the evolution of this summer’s Indonesian/American wedding plans. This year flexibility was the key word: be ready to adapt to changes, even at the last minute.
We changed the reception food several times, including twice the day of the wedding when an Indonesian friend brought foods traditionally served at an Indonesian wedding: a cone of yellow rice with crispy nuggets arranged on banana leaves surrounded by tomatoes and cucumbers. Traditionally the couple cut the cone and serve it to each other and their parents – similar to our cake cutting ceremony.
To accommodate the extra food, my husband set up another table. We shifted food around and invited guests to line up and try the Indonesian food, “It is good.” Guests especially liked the Indonesian “build-your-own” soup.
For two days the tables, chairs and decorations resembled a Disney animated film with everything except the music. Tables moved to the left, to the right, forward and backward. Portable walls shifted places. Floral arrangements floated between the fellowship hall and the church sanctuary. An arrangement I left beautifully draped with an Indonesian scarf disappeared. I found its stemless flowers on top of the cake replacing the cake’s misplaced flowers.
I bought an okay skirt at a department store to wear to the wedding. The day of the wedding, I was offered a beautiful, colorful Indonesian wrap-around skirt and shawl to wear. I welcomed the change and received a number of compliments about it. Plus, I felt graciously beautiful … once the skirt was secured against sliding off and leaving me suddenly half-dressed.
I spent one Saturday making skirts for the flower girls and a shirt for the ring bearer. Two days before the wedding our only grandson, who served as ring bearer at last year’s wedding sighed wearily, “I always have to be the ring bearer.”
“You don’t want to be the ring bearer?” I asked,
“No,” he sagged.
“Okay, then we will let your little sister be the ring bearer instead of being a flower girl.” I paused before asking, “do you want to show her how to be a ring bearer?”
“Okay!” He perked up and told everyone that he and his sister were the ring bearers.
And he did show her how to do the job: The day of the wedding he grabbed his smiling, almost, three-year-old sister by the hand and dragged her at a run down the aisle to the stage where they stood very still – holding their ring pillows. They waited quietly to be escorted off the stage to their mother who was video taping the ceremony. As couple left at the end of the ceremony, video-taping Mamma turned the camera to follow the bridal couple down the aisle and dropped the camera when her now shirtless ring bearing son popped into her view finder. His momma blinked twice, recovered, redressed her son and proceeded to the reception – which went off with no further changes. Undressed children were definitely not on any list.
It was a lovely wedding: the bride was beautiful and the groom handsome in Indonesian apparel. The ceremony spiritual and the reception reflected both backgrounds – And few realized how many times I lost my lists before everyone helped pull off another wonderful wedding.