Since it is still our anniversary month, I’ll sneak in another memorable wedding post. If you missed my first one, go back and check out that story.

My cousin Erik was getting married in the summer of 2006. I drove from Wisconsin, picked up Jeff in the Chicago area (we were dating at the time) and we made our way to Ohio, where the bride was from, to join the rest of my family for the wedding. Erik and I are the same age and grew up together, and I became friends with his wife, so I had the honor of being a bridesmaid in the wedding. I think it was my third time being a bridesmaid in 2006 and each dress was a similar style but different color. Erik & Mandy’s summer wedding was a lovely yellow.

Family weddings out of town are always fun when you stay in the same hotel. My sister and I shared a room, while Jeff and my brother shared another room. Cousins, aunts and uncles, my parents, and my sister and her family were all there as well, so I’m sure we had late night talks in the hallways and laughed too loud for the people in the hotel not related to us. Sorry!

The rehearsal and rehearsal dinner went great. Everyone was having a wonderful time. Then the morning of the wedding came. The power in the hotel went out, which meant some people had trouble with their alarm clocks and were almost late to the wedding.

But the first issue I remember, is Erik knocking on my hotel room door asking if I have any CDs. Yes, this was way back when we had music on compact discs and not on our phones, or even easily accessible on the internet. The DJ and his wife had just divorced and the wife took all their music. Not only was this his first wedding since the divorce, but he didn’t have much music to play. Thankfully, since I had road tripped from Wisconsin, I had brought my entire CD collection. I wish I had a picture of this, but imagine the big black leather cases with pages of CDs inserted. I had 4 cases.

With the music issues mostly handled, I moved on through hair and makeup and I was ready and at the church. Now I have one thing I do in every wedding that I get to stand up in. I privately ask the bride and/or groom if they’re sure. I remember asking Erik, since he is my cousin, “Are you sure you want to marry Mandy?” He smiled and said he was positive. Then I asked Mandy. She looked at me like I was trying to break up the wedding. “Hey, I’m sure if you’re sure,” I told her. Mandy said she was positive she wanted to marry Erik. Great! Let’s get going.

The ceremony is a success and next we have pictures. I realize that my dress seems to have popped at the seam on the side. These bridesmaid dresses are always pretty but not the best quality. It wasn’t a hole all the way to my skin, but the seam popped enough that it was visible. I pulled the pin out of my flowers and used it to hold the dress together enough for pictures.

We had a few hours between the ceremony and reception so I changed out of the dress back at the hotel, and Jeff and I went on a search for a sewing kit. No one seemed to have any. Finally we found a dry cleaner. “Do you have a sewing kit we can buy? Or can you fix this dress really quickly?” The nice lady had nothing at her store to help us, but then remembered her personal sewing kit in her purse. She graciously gave it to us. Jeff sewed my dress back at the hotel (I have no sewing skills) and we were off to the reception.

The reception was fun. But the recently-divorced DJ drank too much, and let everyone make a speech. As he held the microphone out for me, I looked at my cousin thinking “Are you sure you want me to do this? I have a lot of embarrassing stories about you I could share.” He gave me the go-ahead-nod, so I did share one embarrassing story but that’ll have to wait for another blog post.

It was a wonderful, memorable wedding. Happy (almost) 15 years Erik & Mandy!